Modeling and control of a bi-brachiate inspection robot for power transmission lines

This paper presents the framework, modeling, controller design, simulation and experiment results of a bi-brachiate inspection robot, which is designed to inspect the high voltage power transmission lines. A bionic structure is adopted for the mechanical design of the inspection robot. It has two multi-joint arms with a claw and a wheel on the top of each arm. A counterweight box is designed to adjust its center of mass (COM). With the wheels it can ride along the line when there are no obstacles. Once it encounters obstacles, the robot can negotiate the obstacle with a turning around way. In order to design a feedback control law, the simplified model of the robot body and its dynamic equation have been developed. Based on the models, an adaptive control law using fuzzy compensator is described in detail. Simulation and experiment results show the effectiveness of the control law and the designed robot prototype.