Mobile Robot for Debris Removal from High Voltage Power Lines

• Rogério Sales Gonçalves UFU
• Frederico Costa Souza UFU
• Rafael Zimmermann Homma Celesc
• Daniel Edgardo Tio Sudbrack Celesc
• Paulo Victor Trautmann Celesc
• Bruno Cordeiro Clasen Celesc

Resumo

Humanity depends on electricity for its comfort and better survival, allowing the performance of various daily tasks and saving lives in many cases. To meet the need for this, thousands of kilometers of energy transmission lines are needed, which must undergo inspections and maintenance to minimize failures in supply. In this context, this work aims to describe a novel mobile robot for removing debris from 69 kV or 138 kV high voltage power lines. As advantages, this robot can reduce the costs related to maintenance operations that involve human labor, considerably increase the efficiency of the tasks and reduce the risks to human integrity, since it can reduce the need for workers in direct contact with the lines. This paper focuses on the robot shield design. After a brief review related to transmission line maintenance robots applied to debris cleaning, the robot schematic, shielding system modeling, and experimental tests are presented.

Palavras-chave: Humanities, Power transmission lines, Focusing, High-voltage techniques, Maintenance engineering, Systems modeling, Inspection, shielding, cables, robotics, mobile robot