A heterogeneous autonomous collaborative system for powerline inspection using human-robotic teaming

This paper explores a novel system architecture of heterogeneous collaborative system for powerline inspection using human-robotic teaming. The research uses Quanser's Autonomous QCar and QDrone to demonstrate the results. This heterogeneous powerline inspection system consists of three separately controlled elements that work collaboratively within a centralized controlled space and those individual elements are as follows: 1) A control system operated by the human that takes cares of the Autonomous car and drone functionality, 2) An autonomous unmanned ground vehicle system that will take tasks from the human control system to drive through the path determined, and 3) An autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle system that conducts the powerline search and inspection within a specified range. All three systems operate together as one heterogeneous system, which demonstrates the application of human-robotic teaming. This paper will demonstrate how the proposed system architecture is constructed and the results obtained from it in an indoor environment is discussed.