ROS Based Simulation Environment for Testing Power Line Inspection Robots

Abstract

In recent years, the network of High Power voltage lines has grown so large that transmission lines can now be seen in very sparsely populated areas as well. Electricity has become an inevitable component of human day-to-day life. The power lines act as pipelines in supplying such a valuable resource. Disruption in the power supply can have a huge impact on people’s lives at times. To ensure an uninterrupted power supply, transmission lines have to be checked and repaired at regular intervals. Several aspects make this tedious. The cost involved in inspection manually, risk of life are dominant among other factors.. Also during manual inspection we have to interrupt the power supply, which causes huge loss. So using robots for transmission line inspection is the best option. There are several transmission line inspection robots but, to test such robots in real-time there is a requirement of lot of cost and time. This research work proposes a virtual environment that can replicate real-time testing physically and also cut down cost and risk factors a great extent. There are several types of robot or autonomous systems that are being used to check transmission lines. This research provides a one-stop solution to test all such robots with minimal or no additional cost.