Effective power transmission requires continuous monitoring of high voltage transmission lines. In many countries, regular transmission line inspection is carried out either manually or using aerial vehicles. These methods could be sometimes risky, inefficient, expensive, and labour intensive. Thus, many robotic structures are being developed with the view of automating the inspection and maintenance work. Most of the existing technology involves heavy robots that consist of rigid parts and lack versatility. Also, studies on their performance in high voltage environments are sparse. The present work aims at integrating the technology incorporating lightweight and electrically insulating robotic structures. Shape memory epoxy and Silicone are two promising polymers for this purpose and are studied as a part of this research.



This work further proposes to improve shape memory epoxy performance by adding Molybdenum Disulphide (MoS2) nanofiller. Insulation characteristics of epoxy/MoS2 nanocomposites are studied systematically. The results indicate that the epoxy nanocomposite with 0.5 wt% of MoS2 has superior insulating characteristics over pure epoxy and other epoxy/MoS2 nanocomposites. Insulating characteristics of Silicone, PLA, and Si-PLA-Si are also discussed, and an overview of an anthropomorphic hand is presented.