Live work is a dangerous and complex operation that endangers the lives of operators. This paper presents an autonomous live-line maintenance robot (ALMR), which is applied to 10 kV overhead lines. The ALMR can complete most of the operations automatically, requiring only a small amount of correction and operation. The paper briefly introduces the overall design of the ALMR. The main part of the paper describes the work carried out to realize automatic operation: (1) Propose a dynamic hierarchical task planning method that can decompose complex operations into a sequence of instructions that the robot can directly execute and can effectively deal with unexpected situations during operation; (2) solve the problem of recognition and positioning of cables under outdoor sunlight interference and complex backgrounds;(3) realize the robot's motion planning in the live-line scene; (4) build a virtual environment to solve the telepresence problem of remote operation. Field experiments show that the ALMR can replace manual operations such as connecting and disconnecting lead-flow lines, and the operating efficiency is close to that of manual operations.

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The application of robots to replace manual work in live-line working scenes can effectively guarantee the safety of personnel. To improve the operation efficiency and reduce the difficulties in operating a live-line working robot, this paper proposes a multi-DOF robot motion planning method based on RRT and extended algorithms. The planning results of traditional RRT and extended algorithms are random, and obtaining sub-optimal results requires a lot of calculations. In this study, a sparse offline tree filling the planning space are generated offline through the growing–withering method. In the process of expanding the tree, by removing small branches, the tree can fully wiring in the planning space with a small number of nodes. Optimize wiring through a large number of offline calculations, which can improve the progressive optimality of the algorithm. Through dynamic sampling and pruning, the growth of trees in undesired areas is reduced and undesired planning results are avoided. Based on the offline tree, this article introduces the method of online motion planning. Experiments show that this method can quickly complete the robot motion planning and obtain efficient and low-uncertainty paths.

Purpose This paper aims to present the design and a prototype experiment of a robotic joint module for tokamak in-vessel manipulator-related research; the results will promote the adaptation of current in-vessel inspection manipulator to achieve full tokamak in-vessel environment compatibility. Design/methodology/approach A flexible metallic bellow-enclosed working chamber is used to protect the main servo drive components, the active cooling method for high temperature protection and the servo control structure simplification for high radiation endurance. A joint module prototype is manufactured and tested under a similar in-vessel environmental condition for extreme condition protection validation and basic servo control ability evaluation. Findings The joint module prototype successfully survived the similar in-vessel environment tests and proved good mobility via closed-loop servo control. A conceptual design of a serial linkage manipulator with joint module structure is proposed for future in-vessel inspection manipulator development. Originality/value The proposed joint module uses common industrial servo components to achieve its full extreme in-vessel environment compatibility. Different from traditional metallic bellow application in a vacuum environment to produce a linear movement result, the proposed joint module aims to achieve rotating movement directly from the metallic bellow structure, thereby reducing the joint structure space requirement, simplifying the vacuum environment movement transmission structure and increasing the vacuum environment compatibility degree.

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