Design and application of a new wheel-based cable inspection robot

To inspect stay cables automatically, a new wheel-based robot system employed in the inspection of cables is introduced. The robot can effectively serve as a substitute for a worker who would otherwise be exposed to a hazardous environment. The designed robot is composed of two equally spaced modules, which are joined by connecting bars to form a closed hexagonal body to clasp the cable. To prevent the robot deviate off the cable, anti deviation device is set on the two modules. Climbing experiments in lab verified the robot can climb on random inclined cables stably. Combined with an application case-the vision inspection system based on CCD cameras, the robot's operating modes and the control methods are introduced in detail. The application indicates that such low-cost robot systems can improve the efficiency of the inspection operation and meet the requirements of a real cable's inspection.