Design of a Drone-Hawk Gripper for Nest Removal from Electric Tower

This paper deals with the bird's nest cleaning equipment, particularly a new type of bird's nest-removing Hawk claw gripper for power transmission towers. Bird's nests are often built on the transmission and distribution network towers. The wooden branches, grass stems, wires and other materials that birds use to make the nest can easily cause the short connection of the power line, causing fire or even burning out the equipment. Causing a power line failure makes a great impact on the economy and human lives. This paper proposed a Hawk-inspired bird's nest cleaning gripper design for a drone arm with three fingers with a long curved talon. The gripper finger talon can penetrate deeper into the nest structure to grip firmly and a drone moves it. The hawk gripper can be easily connected to a foldable drone arm and operated remotely on the electrical tower. We developed a prototype of a hawk gripper and demonstrated its feasibility.