Balance control of a novel power transmission line inspection robot

This paper presents several methods to maintain the stability of a new designed inspection robot when walking on the power transmission line and overcoming the obstacle on the line. The new dual-arm platform has 3 DOFs of each arm to fulfill rotating, lifting and lowering and moving on the line with a wheel. With a novel mechanism the robot can control the position of its center of gravity flexibly. The model of the power transmission line inspection robot is established for stability control. A FZMP controller is used to maintain the coincidence of the projection of the center of gravity and contact point, which is the necessary condition of the robot's stability. A look-ahead control algorithm is introduced to deal with the overshooting and vibration caused by sharp corner or high curvature in the joint space of the planned path to overcome an obstacle. The paper ends with the presentation of an experiment results.