Robots inspect power facilities in mountainous Chinese province

GUIYANG -- Southwest China's Guizhou province has started using robots to conduct routine inspections at its power substations in remote mountainous areas.

So far, 13 robots have been deployed to 10 power substations in the city of Tongren, where they can conduct automatic inspection patrols, according to the Guizhou branch of the China Southern Power Grid.

"Once per week, they can patrol and check 3,800 points at the station without human intervention, at an accuracy rate of 100 percent," said Zhou Jingyu, head of the Taiping Power Substation in Tongren.

Equipped with high-precision sensors and high-definition cameras, the robots can complete a routine patrol in 50 minutes, compared with 12 hours by human inspectors, who must spend another 40 minutes traveling to the substation, Zhou said.

Perched on the rugged Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, Guizhou's power facilities are susceptible to disruption by extreme weather conditions, thus demanding frequent patrols and maintenance.

Boasting higher efficiency and reliability, the patrol robots are expected to be applied in other roles within the mountainous province's power supply sector, Zhou said.

China is increasingly using robotic technologies to solve the lack of technicians in out-of-the-way mountainous areas. Last year, the mountainous province of Yunnan said drones had replaced humans in the arduous inspection of its 90,000-km power transmission lines.