IoT based Autonomous Tunnel Electrical Cable Fault Detection and Maintenance Robot

Abstract

For the long term sustainability perspective, many major cities around the globe are using underground tunnels for power cable distribution. The conventional method is environmentally damaging and significantly more expensive. Human workers face many difficulties in maintaining and repairing the power cables in underground tunnels. Hence our system substitutes the need for a human presence inside the tunnel for fault detection of power cables. Our system presents a model of a robot that can inspect the surrounding conditions of the underground tunnel by traveling from one end of the tunnel to another without any human interference. With the help of the sensors employed on the Robot, all the information about underground tunnels such as the presence of harmful gases, temperature, obstacles, and fire accidents is transmitted by a wireless means through RF transceiver. Along with this data, the Robot detects physical damage on the wire and sends fault location to the receiving station through RF transceiver. Hence the above data helps the user to estimate the safety or danger level and accordingly to decide the plan of action to solve the problem in the fastest way possible.