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The Design and Application of a Track-type Autonomous Inspection Robot for Electrical Distribution Room

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2019

Min Cheng Open the ORCID record for Min Cheng [Opens in a new window]  and
Dao Xiang
Min Cheng*
Affiliation:
School of Computer Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026 Anhui, China
Dao Xiang
Affiliation:
R&D Centre, Yijiahe Technology Co. Ltd., Nanjing, 210012 Jiangsu, China E-mail: xiangdao@yijiahe.com
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: ustccm@mail.ustc.edu.cn
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Summary

Electrical distribution equipment inspection is crucial for the electric power industry. With the rapid increase in the number of electrical distribution rooms, an unattended inspection method, for example, autonomous inspection robot, is eagerly desired by the industry to make up for the deficiencies of traditional manual inspection in effectiveness and validity. Existing inspection robots designed for indoor substations are generally lack of practicality, due to the factors such as inspection requirements and robot weight. To bridge the gap between prototype and practicality, in this work, we design the first completely autonomous robotic system, LongSword, which provides a satisfying technical solution for equipment inspection with an optical zoom camera, a thermal imaging camera or a partial discharge detector. Firstly, we design a novel and flexible hardware architecture which allows the robot to move, lift, and rotate in the station to reach any desired position. Secondly, we develop an intelligent software framework which consists of several modules to achieve accurate equipment recognition and reliable failure diagnosis. Thirdly, we achieve an apposite integration of the existing technologies to implement an applicable robotic system that can fulfill the requirements of indoor equipment inspection. There are over 200 LongSwords currently serving about 160 electrical distribution rooms, some of which have been working for more than 1 year. The average precision of device status recognition is up to 99.70%, and the average inspection time of a single device is as short as 13.5 s. The feedback from workers shows that LongSword can significantly improve the efficiency and reliability of equipment inspection, which accelerates the process of setting up unmanned stations.

Keywords

Electrical distribution roomAutonomous equipment inspectionTrack-type robotImage recognitionPartial discharge detection
Type
Articles
Information
Robotica , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , February 2020 , pp. 185 - 206
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

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