An entanglement-clearing robot for power transmission line with composite clearing tool

External entanglements on transmission line always result in a flashover due to insufficient dielectric distance, especially in rainy days, which causes great loss for society. Most entanglements are removed manually by lineman up to now and this work is risky and laborious. An entanglement-clearing robot is designed and implemented in this paper. A composite clearing device, which is made up of a heating cutting tool and a blade cutting tool, can remove both thread like and cloth like entanglements effectively. A lifting device is designed to realize control of two sub-tools separately with just one actuator. Experiments results show that the prototype can carry out the clearing task effectively.