Development of a line-walking mechanism for power transmission line inspection purpose

A mobile mechanism with biped configuration is proposed for power transmission line inspection purpose. The wire-walking cycle of the designed mechanism composed of single-support phase and double-support phase. During the process of single-support phase, one foot hang on line and the other foot swing from rear to front to overcome obstacles on line and realize wire-walking locomotion. The novel mechanism designing enable the centroid of the robot concentrate on the hip joint to minimize the drive toque of hip joint and keep the robot stable during the single-support phase. And the centroid of the robot will be adjusted to concentrate to the other leg to start a new single-support phase. Both the forward kinematics model and inverse kinematics model are established in this paper for motion control. The feasibility of this concept is then confirmed by designing a real wire-walking robot and by performing experiment with a simulated line environment.