Research on a detection robot for power equipment status in hazardous scenarios

Abstract

To address the issue of personnel safety during daily maintenance and repair of electrical equipment in adverse environments such as substation GIS, high-voltage switchgear, narrow cable trenches, underground cable galleries, or in hazardous scenarios such as fires or explosions, a design method for a robot that can detect the status of electrical equipment under hazardous electrical scenarios has been proposed. Firstly, the overall architecture of the robot is presented, including structural design, detection function design, and control system design. Furthermore, movement characteristics analysis based on a dual-arm mobile chassis and weight optimization based on finite element method have been conducted, with the research and development, in the meantime, of an integrated multi-sensor intelligent detection and perception module, including sound, infrared, and UHF sensors. Finally, the design plans of various components in the control system are introduced in detail. The results have shown that the proposed power equipment status detection robot has been functionally, effectively, and reliably verified through experimental testing.