Those I know of are advertised as semi-autonomous and capable to move over any distance for days or weeks; the line provides both power and communications. Robo

Those I know of are advertised as semi-autonomous and capable to move over any distance for days or weeks; the line provides both power and communications. Robots are put there in a traditional way, by line workers climbing the towers, then the operator controls them remotely if needed. Some models also appear to have a winch for the tools and spare parts if a problem is found. I have no idea if they work as well as advertised though, hence the question. I've seen those things crawling along a nearby power line a couple times, although these particular ones seemed too small to be able to do anything besides inspecting the line with a camera/sensors. I'm not in the US though, things are different here, we don't use aerial transport on every occasion. EDIT: on a further inspection, the robots seem to have issues with crawling over more complex line sections, and are used mainly on very high voltage lines. Apparently, the tech is still in its infancy.