Kanpur: Be it summer or winter, people always face a lot of problems due to power faults. In order to deal with this problem and to get rid of it, the Powergrid Corporation of India has developed a unique robot, which instantly detects faults in electric systems.
POWERGRID has developed the robot in collaboration with IIT Kanpur. Apart from detecting electric faults, the robot will also do inspection work at sub-stations. Senior Professor of IIT Kanpur, Bishakh Bhattacharya said that the robot is ready to be introduced in the system and is being tested at a sub-station located in Panki.
Robot Will Find the Fault in Minutes: Senior Professor of IIT Kanpur, Bishakh Bhattacharya said that it usually takes a lot of time to find the fault in the sub-station. But the latest robot will find the fault in a short time, he said adding it will do away the cumbersome mechanical process involved in the process.
Work Will Also be Done on Time: Bhattacharya said the robot can be used in every sub-station of the country. “Right now this robot is working semi-autonomously. This is a mobile robot that can move comfortably inside the power substation. Work is being done to make it fully automatic,” he added.
How The Robot Will Work: Senior Professor Bishakh Bhattacharya informed that the magnetic power inside the substation is very high, which is very harmful to humans to some extent. With the help of this robot, humans will be able to get away with that risk to a great extent. Bhattacharya said that the robot is fully equipped with many types of modern cameras and a microphone, which can easily detect the shortcomings of the substation.
As the robot moves inside the substation, the fault in the substation will be clearly visible on the computer screen connected to the robot. It took the developers about one and a half years to develop the inspection robot at a cost of about Rs 1.5 crore.
According to the IIT Kanpur website, the autonomous mobile robot will help in the inspection of substations to take care of repetitive and time-consuming inspection activities on a regular basis. The robot will be equipped with a wide array of sensors (IRIS control cameras, IR thermal sensors, LIDAR, fire alarms) and an autonomously (along with tele-operation feature) navigating platform which will roam around a substation and perform regular inspection for any damages in components that are essential for continuous running of the sub-station.
The robot will utilize advanced vision processing and machine learning algorithms to independently identify and flag any damages or failure to any critical components in the substation and automatically trigger an alarm.
Robot Will Cover 90 Substations of Kanpur: According to senior professor Bishakh Bhattacharya, the robot can easily cover a substation in about 2 hours with the speed of this robot being 5 to 10 kilometers per hour. The robot can easily go where humans cannot go and can easily detect the power line faults and provide crucial data to the department.
