Development of the Insulator Washer Robot

Shigeo Hirose", Sanehito Aoki** ** Takaoka Electric Mfg. Co., Ltd

* Tokyo Institute of Technology 3- 1 Nishibiwajima-cho Yoshino-cho,
Department of Mechano-Aerospace Engineering Nishikasugai-Gun Aichi 452, Japan
2-12-1 Ookayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 152,
Japan

Abstract unit installed on the end of the arm.

There have been so many application researches of robot
This is a report on the development o f the Insulator system to make maintenance and inspection tasks. But as far
Washer-I, a robot designed to wash the insulators for high as the authors had surveyed, there were no precedent works of
voltage lines that m installed on steel towers. The Insulator the robot system which automate the cleaning task of the
Washer4 is composed of an orbit rail for ascending the steel insulator as shown in Fig. 1. The robot system introduced in
tower, a cylindncal coordinate type ann mounted on the orbit this paper is thus done in completely unprecedented and
rail, and a rotating washing unit which, when transported by original standpoint.
the orbit cart and attached to the fin of the insulator by the
arm, automatically rotates around the insulator and conducts Operarer Cable head
the washing operation with on-board brushes. A new long
stroke, light weight mechanism and a "slant wheel drive
mechanism, " which produces movement with two degrees o f
freedom, were introduced into the drive system of the arm in
order to clean all surfaces of the insulators, which have a
height of nearly three meters. Finally, operational
experiments were conducted using the Insulator Washer-I,
and the results indicated that practical operation is possible.

1. Introduction

Large scale insulators are installed on steel towers for high

voltage lines. These insulators require periodic cleaning in
order to maintain their insulating properties. This kind of
operation is currently done manually as shown in Fig. 1, but
i t is highly desirable to automate this procedure, because
there is the danger of falling during operations at high
places, and also, there is the danger of electrocution by Fig. 1 Conventional insulator cleaning operation
contact with the high voltage lines.
This research considers a robot system to conduct this
kind of cleaning operation, and we are reporting on the 2. Targeted Operations and Conditions
development of the insulator washing robot named "Insulator
Washer-I", which introduces two new technologies: a "slant In order to maintain and inspect the insulators, the human
wheel drive mechanism" which realizes a light weight arm operator climbs up the steel tower, and conducts the
drive mechanism capable of a wide movable range using following operations:
movement based on a cylindrical coordinate system; and
also, an "end-effector separation mechanism", which at the 1) First, the electrical condition is inspected, and the unit
time of use operates by separating the rotational washing is grounded for safety.

IEEE lnternatlonal Conference

o n Robotlcs and Automatlon
0-/803-1965-6/95 54.00 @ I W5 l t t E 1783-
 2) All surfaces of the insulating tube are washed using
a brush and water.
3) Finally, the outer appearance is visually inspected.
When making a robot for these kinds of operations, the
following points need attention:
a) There are many steel towers near residential houses,
and for this reason, it is not desirable to have a washing
method in which large quantities of dirty water go flying
about such as when spraying with a powerful water jet.
For this reason, a cleaning method must be adopted in
which the insulator is uniformly brushed while applying
a small quantity of water.
b) It should also be possible for the robot to approach
the insulating parts on the steel tower from the ground by
self-propulsion, and to move between insulators on the
steel towers. Moreover, the robot should also be able to
descend by itself from the steel tower after completion of
the operation, and then be transported to the next steel
tower. For this reason, the mechanisms should be made
as light weight as possible. Also, additional work to the
steel tower for this purpose should be kept to the
minimum.
3.1. End-effector Separation
Type Mechanism
The Insulator Washer-I must clean dirty insulators in a
brushing operation with washing brushes while using a
small amount of water. When attempting to realize this
kind of operation with an ordinary manipulator
mechanism, it is necessary to have multiple degrees of
freedom for delivering the brushes to the back side of the
insulators, a very long reach for the arm, an arm force
control mechanism that applies the brushes onto the
insulator with the desired amount of pressure, and a
powerful arm output which can support the weight of the
long arm and operational reaction force. To design this
kind of arm that is sufficiently light weight is nearly
impossible when an orthodox design.
Fig.2 is one of the former design examples of
insulator washing robot of our group to make washing
task for comparatively small insulators. It had 5 d.o.f
articulated type configuration and the end-effector with
cleaning brush. The end-effector of the arm can be
approached to the insulator and rotates the cleaning brush
around it. But as the end-effector was heavy, it was
difficult to make precise positioning of the brush and to
make smooth brushing. As a result, the washing quality
was bad and was not practical.

3. Basic Configuration of
the Insulator Washer-I

There are many possible approaches to configure this

kind of self-propelling system and manipulator system for
an insulator washing robot. After studying several
possibilities, finally, the most simple rail advancement
system, in which rails are installed on the steel towers,
was adopted as the self-propelling system. Moreover, in
order to reliably wash insulators that have a length of
nearly three meters, we newly introduced: a mechanism
with two degrees of freedom in movement based on a
slant wheel array as the arm drive mechanism; and a
mechanism called the "end effect separation washer" in
which the cleaning part is separated from the arm in order
to reliably clean complicated insulator surface shapes.
We have called this insulator washing robot the "Insulator
Washer-I," where gaisi means insulator in Japanese, and
from here we will explain the detailed configuration of
each part. In addition, the Insulator Washer-I is equipped
with electrical condition inspection equipment, grounding
equipment, lighting equipment, and inspection cameras,
etc.
Fig.2 Former design examples of insulator washing
robot

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 Thus, in the Insulator Washer-I, we focused on the fluctuate by nearly two times from the base of the
point that the insulators targeted for cleaning all have a insulator up to the tip. For this reason, the gripper
shape in which circular fins are stacked up, and we newly mechanism which grasps the fin is configured so as to
introduced a mechanism called end-effector separation
mechanism. This is not a device which simply attaches
D r i v e roller
a brush to an effector on the end of a manipulator, but
rather, it is a rotating washer unit with brushes that is
provided as a separable end-effector that separates from the
manipulator during the washing operation, and conducts
the washing operation using the self-propulsion functions
of a rotational washing unit while following along the
fins of the insulators.

The end-effector separation mechanism that has been

introduced is composed of a mechanism that firmly grasps
the fins of the insulators like a gripper, as shown in Fig.
3, a mechanism which rotationally drives around the fins
of the insulator after they have been grasped, a washer
which washes around the fin of the grasped part, and a
clamp holder mechanism that connects with the end part
of the manipulator. Fig.4 shows the clamp holding
mechanism to fix the washer unit to the arm of
Insulator-I. Three clamp nails is driven to rotate
simultaneously by the motor mounted on line arm and
expands their supporting diameter inside clamp holder to
fix the washer unit firmly. The mechanism has several
features, such as; allowing comparatively large F i g 3 The mechanism of rotational washer unit
positioning error of the clamp nails in relation to the
clamp holder, holding the washer unit with no energy
loss by using toggle effect, and allowing light-weight and
solid structure.

The sequence of the washing operation based on the

washer which uses this end-effector separation type
mechanism is as follows.

1) The arm holds the washer unit that is housed on the

orbit cart by the clamp holder mechanism, and approaches
rm of Washer
the washer unit to the fins of the insulator to be cleaned.
2) The gripper mechanism of the washer unit is closed,
and fastened the washer unit around the fins of the
insulator with four rollers. At the same time, the clamp
nails are released from the clamp holder of the washer
unit.
3) The washer unit circulates in a 180 degree round trip
around the fin of the insulator. At the same time, two
brushes, which are installed so as to hold the fin between
them, rotate and clean while small amount of washing
P
water is injected.
4) When the washing of a given fin is completed, the
L Washer Unit i
washer unit is clamped again by the arm and carried to
the next fin of the insulator. Fig.4 Clamp holding mechanism of the washer unit to
The diameters of the insulator fins which are targeted the arm of Insulator-I

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adapt to these kinds of fluctuations in diameter. The
external appearance of the rotational washer unit is
indicated in Fig. 5 . it has a weight of 9 kg, and a
rotational speed of 10 cm/sec.
Fig.5 The rotational washer unit in operation
The cleaning capacity of this rotational washer unit has
been experimentally verified. As a result, it was found
that, given the washing conditions of the washer unit
taking five trips around one fin of the insulator using 100
cc of injected water, the salt deposit density of a dirty
insulator with a salt deposit density of about 0.12
mg/cm2 became 0.001 mg/cm2 after washing, and this
was sufficient cleaning capacity to satisfy the standard.
Moreover, as for the condition after cleaning, all surfaces
of the insulator could be washed with nearly equal quality,
and it was confirmed that this manifested a practical
washing capacity that is better than the washing operation
conducted by human operators.
3.2. Main Body of the Arm
There are two operations of the arm:
1) an operation to attach and switch the rotational
washer unit from fin to fin;
2) an operation to attach the grounding device to the
metal fixture that is on the peak of the insulator when
beginning the cleaning operation, and to release that
grounding device after the completion of the cleaning
operation.
To accomplish these operations in relation to an actual
insulator, it is necessary to have both movement in a
long perpendicular direction (approximately three meters
or less) and rotational movement around the perpendicular
axis. The articulated type arm can not be considered as
good design to place excessive torque on the base joint
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even though the end-effector separation mechanism is
introduced.
Cylindrical coordinate type drive mechanism to conduct
the rotational and up and down movements around the
central axis is more promising. However, when
attempting to realize long stroke cylindrical coordinate
movement with a long ball spline and a long stroke ball
screw, and a rotating table that rotates all these
mechanisms, again a large scale structure was necessary,
and it was difficult to make it light weight.
Then, we introduced into the Insulator Washer-I a new
cylindrical coordinate movement mechanism with two
degrees of freedom. The mechanism that was introduced
consists of a pipe fixed to a stand in the center of an
orbital cart, and, attached to the pipe, an arm drive
mechanism that conducts both up and down movement
and rotational movement. The two degrees of freedom
movement of the arm is produced by a pair of drive rings
which grasp the central axis pipe as shown in Fig. 6.
Fig.6 Driving principle of slant wheel drive
mechanism
Those drive rings are driven separately with actuators
installed on the arm. Installed on each drive ring are
multiple free rotating wheels slanted at an angle in
relation to the central axis of the central axis pipe, and the
device is configured such that the these wheels grasp the
pipe with a fixed fastening force. Moreover, the
directions of the sets of drive ring wheels equipped on the
top and bottom are configured so as to be arranged
mutually symmetrically.
 When drive rings 1 and 2 of this mechanism are rotated
with the motors 1 and 2 in opposite directions, both
produce the spiral movement of a screw, and prismatic up
and down movement is produced without the arm
rotating. When drive rings 1 and 2 are rotated in the same
direction, the propulsion force on the axis direction of the
pipe is canceled, and the arm produces rotational
movement around the axis pipe. This relation is shown
in Table 1.
Table 1 Motion principle of slant wheel drive
mechanism
I1P
-. I DOWN
~. 1 RIGHT 1 LEFT I
MOTION MOTION REVOLUTION REVOLUTION
ccw 1 cw 1 ccw
MOTOR
No. I
MOTOR
~
0 The Rcmaincd Forcc
x The Canceled Force
fi Wheel rotational direction
By doing this, the arm produces 2 d.0.f. movement in
which it moves up and down following the pipe or rotates
around the axis of the pipe. Of course, if the
combination of speeds of both drive rings are varied,
prismatic up and down movement and rotational
movement may be simultaneously realized.
The characteristics of the 2 d.0.f. mechanism we
propose are:
i) In principle, the mechanism does not rely on
slippage of the wheels and energy loss owing to the
slippage is small.
ii) This is a mechanism which maintains a posture by
friction, but because it is fastened around a large aperture
pipe by many wheels, a sufficiently large posture
maintenance force can be generated.
iii) It can be made light weight because it is configured
with a light weight cylindrical tube, and small scale
wheels, etc.
iv) A great deal of power is required to move the arm
upward. The introduced mechanism produces this motion
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by combining the drive forces of the two installed
actuators. For this reason, the output to weight ratio can
be heightened, and this makes it easier to lighten the
weight of the device. The effect of the combined
actuators can be regarded as one application of the design
concept called "coupled drive" which the authors have
proposed [ 11.
As far as the authors investigated there seems to be no
previous instmces of the 2 d.0.f driving mechanism
similar to the one proposed here. The ball screw and
spline combined driving mechanism of THK Co. Ltd. 121
uses same driving mechanism in principle, but the
mechanism dtxouples prismatic and rotational motions
and the above mentioned feature of iv) can not be
acquired. Moreover it uses special screw shaft and difficult
to make Bight weight and long stroke driving mechanism.
The outer appearance of parts of this manipulator are
indicated in Fig.7 and Fig.8.
3.3 Rail 'Transporter
This is a device which carries all the equipment such as
the manipulator and the rotating washer, ascends up to the
landing where the insulators are mounted at a height 20
meter
F i g 7 Two d.0.f. driving mechanism of the arm
melers above the ground, and moves horizontally on
the landing. T o prevent falling, this rail transporter uses
an escort device on the rail for movement, and produces
movement force with a system of fastening on the rail
with wheels The escort rail has a maximum R400
curving part, but this system can move even on the
curving part, and has been made so that it can go from
ascending motion to horizontal motion continuously.
The transportable weight is 240 kg. The external
appearance is shown in Fig. 9.
 Fig.8 Total view of the Insulator Washer-I Fig.9 Rail and movable base of the Insulator Washer-I

4. Performance Verification Tests

As a result, it could be confirmed that the series of
Total system of the Insulator Washer-I robot is operations could be reliably executed. It required
constructed. The specifications of the robot is shown in approximately 150 minutes to finish cleaning three
Table 2. insulators. In addition, in order to grasp wind speed
Table 2: Specifications of Insulator Washer-I properties of the robot, wind tunnel experiments were
also conducted. As a result, it could be confirmed that the
~ O T A LLENGTH 1 1600 mm 1 above series of operations were not effected by wind
OTAL WIDHT 1 1000 mm
speeds of approximately 10 m/sec.
HEIGHT 1 3000 mm
I WEIGHT 1 175 kg I
I CPF.F.D I Maximum 4.5mimin 1
MAX WIND 10 misec

1 CONTROL LANGUAGE I c language

Besides the robot construction, we manufactured model

steel towers which copy the landings of on-site steel
towers both indoors and outdoors, and complete tests of
the robot were conducted on these experimental setups.
The series of operations is indicated in Fig.s lO(d)-(d).

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 References
1) Shigeo Hirose, Mikio Sato, Coupled Drive of the
Multi-DOF Robot, Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics
and Automation, Scottsdale, Arizona 1610-1616 (1989)
2) Catalog of LM system, THK Co. Ltd. Japan

Fig.10 Sequential motion of the Insulator Washer-1 on

the on-site steel tower setup

5. Conclusions

We have developed the insulator washer robot,

"Insulator Washer-I," which, by remote control from the
ground, can execute the cleaning and inspection of
insulators for high voltage lines installed on the landings
of steel towers. Then, the results of performance
verification experiments of all kinds led to the conclusion
that the series of operations can be reliably executed, and
that the robot it has good prospects for on-site
applications.

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