Application Research Of Intelligent Navigation System Of Substation Inspection Robot

Transformer substation plays an essential role in the electric power system,Therefore,it is necessary to ensure the safety of the substation during operation,so as to provide convenient conditions for the daily life and production of the public.Routing inspection of the substation and the operation conditions therefore are necessary,however,the current manual inspection is insufficient to the requirements of the substation.In view of this,the inspection robot appropriately comes into play.Despite several applications of the inspection robot in substations nowadays,deficiencies of such robots still exist,hindering the further promotion of the robot technology.Free motion in the substation,as part of the navigation system,is the precondition of routing inspection by the robot.In summary,the current navigation and location have some main problems: regional location is of low accuracy,independence is insufficient,and the ability to obstacle avoidance is weak.This paper,therefore,aims at the shortcoming of the smart navigation system of the robot for routing inspection in the substation to carry out the design and research.The navigation system consists of three parts: SLAM,motion control,and path plan.Based on this structure,the main contents of this paper are as follows:According to the requirements for the robot in routing inspection of the substation by the national grid,the external framework and layout/wiring of the chassis part are first confirmed.Then,microcontroller,motor,actuation,and the modes of navigation and obstacle avoidance are determined for the navigation system as per the field environment and inspection missions of the substation.After that,the paper studies the procedures of map acquisition in the substation by the robot as well as the location system of the robot.SLAM is not always required for the robot operation;when for the first setting of the robot,the new environment of the substation can be collected,processed,and created for the electronic map.After that,the location and navigation system works by means of the sensor of the robot and the electronic map.As for the low accuracy of location and insufficient flexibility of the location system that has a single sensor,the paper proposes an EKF-based multi-sensor location system which is simulation verified by Matlab.The chassis system of robot’s navigation is designed as per the road conditions in the substation,and PCB board is designed based on the STM32 central control unit,and PWM control mode is used for precise regulation of the rotation rate of the chassis motor which can increase the motion accuracy of the robot’s routing inspection.In addition,principles of the algorithms for path planning are analyzed,including the global path planning and a regional path planning.Based on the environment in the substation,global path planning A~* algorithm combined with regional fuzzy logic algorithm is adopted for the navigation system.A performance test then is carried out to verify the robot’s smart navigation system.Self-testing and the measurement from the State Grid Electric Power Experimental Research Institute show that the proposed smart navigation system has a strong ability to obstacle avoidance with high independence and location accuracy,fully fulfilling the requirements of the substation for the robot’s routing inspection and achieving the expected design.