The developments in mobile robotics have increasingly played an important role in the inspection and maintenance work of Power Transmission Lines (PTLs). This paper presents the research and development of the inspection robots for 500kV PTLs in Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences (SIACAS). An overview of the research work and the development of an inspection robot AApe-B, are introduced, respectively. The AApe-B can run on the Overhead Ground Wires (OGWs) and navigate different types of obstacles in remote and locally autonomous control mode. A novel dual-wheel-arm hybrid mechanism with the excellent locomotion and obstacle-navigation performance is designed, and obstacle navigation process is analyzed. An embedded control system which can withstand the strong electromagnetic interference has been developed. A lot of field experiments have been carried out, and the experimental results have shown that the inspection robot can reliably work during the 500kV Extra High Voltage (EHV) electromagnetic environment and possess the primary ability to implement the inspection task of the 500kV PTLs.

Online evaluation of battery state of function (SOF) is crucial for battery management systems of autonomous mobile robots. Battery State of Charge (SOC) represents its remaining energy available, whereas internal resistance and capacity reflect its state of health (SOH). In this paper, an improved equivalent circuit model is proposed to estimate SOC, internal resistance and capacity using an unscented Kalman filter (UKF). The proposed method not only estimates SOC, but also evaluates SOH and SOF. Experimental results have shown the effectiveness of the proposed method using resistive loads and a robot prototype for inspecting power transmission line.