Energy grids represent a fundamental infrastructure of any country. These structures consist of many kilometres of power lines that must be periodically inspected and maintained. Among the necessary operations are installing and removing bird diverters to reduce bird strikes on power lines. These devices are intended to improve birds’ detection of power lines and reduce the risk of collision. Often, the installation and removal of bird diverters from power lines is accomplished by humans operating from helicopters or directly on the power lines. Apart from the considerable cost of these operations, working in elevated environments creates human safety risks. To reduce these risks, this paper proposes a novel solution to automatize these tasks. The proposed solution is a prototype gripper that can be mounted on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and remotely operated to install or remove bird diverters. This work presents a mechatronic device and software architecture system that is experimentally evaluated in a laboratory mock-up, which consists of a manipulator equipped with the proposed tool for removing a bird diverter. Future work is needed to deploy the proposed tool on a UAV.


    Access

    Download


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    A Novel Gripper Prototype for Helical Bird Diverter Manipulation



    Publication date :

    2023-01-01



    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



    Classification :

    DDC:    629



    A Novel Gripper Prototype for Helical Bird Diverter Manipulation

    Jonathan Cacace / Lorenzo Giampetraglia / Fabio Ruggiero et al. | DOAJ | 2023

    Free access



    A Versatile Gripper for Cloth Manipulation

    Donaire, Sònia / Borràs, Julia / Alenyà, Guillem et al. | BASE | 2020

    Free access

    WAKE DIVERTER

    CLOVER KRISTOPHER WILLIAM / BOHLIG MARK RAYMOND / BOHLIG LUKE RAYMOND | European Patent Office | 2017

    Free access