Design of a Robot Applied to Inspection of Power Transmission Lines

This paper describes the process of designing the mechanical part of a robotic system able to travel autonomously on power transmission lines, to inspect them. Such a robot has to do more than just rolling on the power transmission line. Obstacles are plenty on these hundreds of kilometers long cables, and towers are regularly standing along the line. Solutions to solve this problem have already been proposed by many researchers, but none of them entirely managed to achieve a complete solution of the problem. As a part of the total project, this work does not have for ambition to solve the entire problem, but to bring new elements of solutions. First is performed a revision of existing robots. After, is presented the robot characteristics and finally a first prototype of the robot is presented.