A task performance test on extracting the insulator by a power distribution line maintenance robot system-alignment of the gripper to the insulator in the image of cameras

We are developing a semi-autonomous robot system for a power distribution line maintenance tasks. The robot system executes primary tasks autonomously when the operator directs tasks, for example “Pull out the insulator”. In this paper, we propose the method for aligning the gripper to the insulator. The proposed method for alignment is as follows: 1) The gripper at the top of the arm approaches the insulator in the image of the hand-eye camera attached at the gripper. 2) The gripper stops when the image of gripper reaches in the center of the left camera attached at the base of the arm. Since the method aligns the gripper to the insulator in the picture images of the hand-eye and the left camera, the alignment is not affected by the errors on 3D-position measurements and the arm link parameters.