Live maintenance robot for high-voltage transmission lines

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to improve the operation and maintenance intelligence of power systems, and summarize the transmission line robots and their key technologies. High-voltage power cables are important channels for power transmission systems. Their special geographical environment and harsh natural environment can lead to many different faults. At present, such special operations in dangerous and harsh environments are performed manually, which have not only high labor intensity and low work efficiency but also great personal safety risks. Design/methodology/approach For maintenance works that are far away from the tower, power outages are required. With the increasing evaluation of transmission quality and operational safety, and the urgent need for automation and operation of modern power systems, the contradiction between this manual operation and modern high-quality power transmission has become increasingly prominent. An effective method to replace the manual maintenance work is to use the mobile robot to carry the operation manipulator and its end tool, that is, the live maintenance robot. Findings Some achievements have been made in the key technologies of live maintenance robots, the work to be done to meet the basic requirements of complex and changeable line environment and practical application. Based on the existing research results of live overhaul robot, the follow-up research will focus on the practical application needs and the frontier of scientific and technological development, and truly realize the human–machine integration between live overhaul robot–human working environment. Only in this way can the robot better serve the operation and maintenance of the power system. Originality/value This paper reviews the system platform, operation function, structural characteristics and key technologies involved in the power cable robot, and the combination of live maintenance robots and modern high-tech such as big data and cloud computing is also given, and finally, the future development direction of the special operation robot is pointed out.

Research on key technologies of multi-task-oriented live maintenance robots for Ultra High Voltage multi-split transmission lines

“…, Wuhan University has developed different autonomous inspection robot for crossing obstacles along the conductor (Fan et al, 2018a(Fan et al, , 2018b and the ground wire (Fan et al, 2018a(Fan et al, , 2018bYe et al, 2018); however, the aforementioned robots do not involve multisplit transmission lines. The live operation center of State Grid Hunan Electric Power Company (Fan et al, 2017;Liu et al, 2016;Jiang et al, 2019) has developed Dream-Series live operation robot for transmission line maintenance. The two-wheels drive physical prototype for the insulator replacement, drainage plate and damper maintenance have been developed for 220 kV single split transmission line; however, it is still unable to complete the maintenance task of double split and four split transmission lines.…”

Application of Automatic Driving Task Sequentialisation Monitoring for Band Operator Robots

“…In order to ensure the power quality of residents and enterprise users, more and more banding operations have appeared in the daily operation and maintenance of distribution networks. Although the banding operation method of distribution networks can improve the satisfaction of users, it brings great challenges to electric power enterprises and banding operators [5][6][7].…”

Application of the Concave Arc Surface Collision Detection Method to Virtual Assembly

“…Robotic applications for the maintenance of electrical live power lines began in the 1980s [2][3]. The current research directions are power transmission line inspection [4][5], teleoperation [6] and the development of mechanism design [7][8]. Robot technology plays an important role in solving this problem, but a robot cannot exactly mimic a person when manipulating the parallel groove clamp.…”