A team from the UW's electrical engineering department has developed a robot with the ability to detect faults in power lines, a job usually time-consuming to do by hand.

The robot can be used to find weak points in electrical grids caused by natural wear or, more pertinently, storms.

"It's one of the only of it's kind," said project leader Alexander Mamishev, head of UW's Sensors, Energy and Automation Laboratory.

"It's is the first robot built that can inspect power cables autonomously looking for incipient failures. It can find cables that may need repair, before they cause problems," Mamishev said in a press release.

"The robot crawls along the cables testing their health status — whether they are still operational cables or whether they are decaying and have to be replaced," he said.

After its five-year development, the robot was taken to New Orleans for a field test, in the heart of the Hurricane Katrina damage. Using its three sensors, it was able to detect problems inside the cables from without.

Although the initial field test was in Louisiana, the team has mainly tested in Seattle because of proximity. Interest has also been expressed in Memphis and other places, Mamishev said.

A person would have to sort through hundreds of feet of cable over many hours in order to accomplish the same amount of work the robot can do in a short space of time, said project coordinator Luke Kearney.

"It's basically just meant to save time and money for power companies so you don't have to waste man hours," he said.

Right now power companies either let a cable age until it fails, or they take out the entire line after a set time period, Mamishev said in a press release.

"Knowing whether the cable is starting to wear would save power companies a lot of money, and it would reduce the number of blackouts," he said.

Though still in testing stage, plans to further develop the robot are in the works.

"There are several possibilities down the road," Kearney said, noting potential marketing options, specifically to nuclear power plants and power companies. "We're looking at putting new sensors on it and modifying it so that it can run at different set-ups."

Reach reporter Jeff Tripoli at jefftripoli@thedaily.washington.edu.