 |
[email protected] |
 |
3275638434 |
 |
 |
| Paper Publishing WeChat |
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Prototype Line Crawler for Power Line Inspection
Rupert Gouws and Nicolaas du Plessis
Full-Text PDF
XML 1052 Views
DOI:10.17265/1934-8975/2013.11.021
Faculty of Engineering, North-West University, Potchefstroom 2531, South Africa
In South Africa, electricity is supplied through thousands-of-kilometers of overhead power cables, which is owned by Eskom the national energy supplier. Currently monitoring of these overhead power cables are done by means of helicopter inspection flights and foot patrols, which are infrequent and expensive. In this paper, the authors present the design of a prototype power line crawler (inspection robot) for the monitoring of these overhead power lines in South Africa. The designed prototype power line crawler is capable of driving on the wire, balancing on the wire and is capable of maneuvering past certain obstacles found on the overhead power cables. The prototype power line crawler is designed to host a monitoring system that monitors the power line as the inspection robot drives on it. Various experimental tests were performed and are presented in this paper, showing the capability of performing these tasks. This prototype inspection robot ensures a platform for future development in this area.
Inspection robot, line crawler, power lines, maneuverability, center of gravity, balancing.