Cost analysis for high voltage transmission line inspection using robot

The electricity transmission lines are conventionally inspected and maintained by linemen with hot sticks that can directly touch the line. The major limitation of this conventional method is high risk and time consuming. With the rapid development of robot technology in recent years, the utilization of robot instead of human being for the regular inspection of the high voltage transmission line has drawn wide attention from both industry and academia. Utility companies aim to harness this modern technology for saving costs and increasing their customer satisfaction. In this paper, we focus on the cost model for using robot for transmission line inspection. A heuristic routing strategy is proposed to guide the motions of robot and supporting team in inspection. The corresponding cost model is derived considering different cost components such as robot depreciation cost, staff salary cost, team ground motion cost, and others. A simulation model is developed to study different working scenarios and estimate the variation of cost considering random factors like the occurrence of the obstacles on inspected lines.