Reliable and intuitive teleoperation of LineScout: a mobile robot for live transmission line maintenance

Power line inspection and maintenance is a slowly but surely emerging field for robotics. This paper describes the control scheme implemented in LineScout technology, one of the first teleoperated obstacle crossing systems that has progressed to the stage of actually performing very-high-voltage power line jobs. Following a brief overview of the hardware and software architecture, key challenges associated with the objectives of achieving reliability, robustness and ease of operation are presented. The coordinated control through visual feedback of all motors needed for obstacle crossing calls for a coherent strategy, an effective graphical user interface and rules to ensure safe, predictable operation. Other features such as automatic weight balancing are introduced to lighten the workload and let the operator concentrate on inspecting power line components. Open architecture was considered for progressive improvements. The features required to succeed in making power line robots fully autonomous are also discussed.