Transmission line inspection using suspended robot: Cost effective analysis and operational routing identification

High voltage transmission lines form a crucial part of the energy infrastructure of a country. Effective maintenance is required to maintain its reliability and reduce the probability of the occurrence of the outage. Conventionally, the routine inspection of the transmission line was conducted by linemen with the assistance of hot stick and helicopter, which is considered dangerous, time-consuming, and expensive. In this thesis, we focus on the initial study of seeking the state of the art robotics technology to by largely replace human beings in transmission line inspection. The existing robotics technologies that are interested by utility companies, as well as the background information of transmission system, are first briefly reviewed. The motivation and objective of the thesis are given. Then, a cost model for using a suspended robot in transmission line inspection following a heuristic routing strategy that guides the motion of the ground support team is introduced. Numerical case study considering various terrain characteristics is implemented to demonstrate the cost related performance of the inspection task using the suspended robot. After that, a revised A-Star routing algorithm is derived to identify the travel path of the ground team to reduce the travel time and distance to further improve the cost-effectiveness of using the suspended robot in transmission line inspection. A true segment of transmission line in Missouri (MO) is used in case study to illustrate the effectiveness of the derived routing algorithm. Finally, the conclusion of the thesis is drawn, and the future work is discussed --Abstract, page iii

Be Active

https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/libcom_stuart_fall2016/1077/thumbnail.jp

Cost Analysis for High Voltage Transmission Line Inspection using Robot

The electricity transmission lines are conventionally inspected and maintained by linemen with hot sticks that can directly touch the line. The major limitation of this conventional method is high risk and time consuming. With the rapid development of robot technology in recent years, the utilization of robot instead of human being for the regular inspection of the high voltage transmission line has drawn wide attention from both industry and academia. Utility companies aim to harness this modern technology for saving costs and increasing their customer satisfaction. In this paper, we focus on the cost model for using robot for transmission line inspection. A heuristic routing strategy is proposed to guide the motions of robot and supporting team in inspection. The corresponding cost model is derived considering different cost components such as robot depreciation cost, staff salary cost, team ground motion cost, and others. A simulation model is developed to study different working scenarios and estimate the variation of cost considering random factors like the occurrence of the obstacles on inspected lines