Autonomous and Collaborative Robots for Energy Systems

The global change of sustainable energy has increased the demand for robotic systems that can work independently from humans to work together safely with their connections through the energy systems (e.g. energy generation plants, transmission lines, renewable energy fields, substations and underground cable networks). Now-a-days, installing robots into the energy systems creates very hazardous and complex environments with time sensitive constraints in which traditional automation methods will not work. The use of autonomous robots (robots that can operate without human interaction) and collaborative robots (robots that can operate with humans) has the potential to deliver safe, reliable and efficient operation of robots in these work environments using technologies for perception (how a robot sees its environment), learning based decision making (make decisions using the information it has learned), distributed control (how robots operate as a distributed system) and collaborate with humans (work with human operators). This review presents a systematic, synthesis of recent advancements in collaborative and autonomous robotics with energy related applications. The review of technology advancements and deployment constraints will use 26 studies published in the major scientific software databases (IEEE Xplore, Scopus, Web of science, ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, & MDPI repositories) from 2024 - 2025. This review focuses on enabling technologies of cognitive and explainable autonomy, navigation using reinforcement learning, multi-robot coordinate, digital twin integration, fault tolerant control systems, energy aware task orchestration and Human-centred interactions through industry 5.0. This study has been categorized based on the type of contribution (research vs. development), Deployment context and technology advancement. It shows that individual capability areas such as navigation intelligence, collaborative interaction and multi-robot coordination continue to progress significantly. It identifies three primary challenges for the continuous improvement of autonomous robotic systems operation and additional research areas like the completeness & reliability of system operation under severe environmental conditions, Energy aware mission planning and scalable coordination of heterogeneous teams of robots with effective human-in-the-loop supervision. This review contains the identification of the most significant research gaps, an outline of how to develop robust, energy aware and Human-centred robotic systems that will facilitate energy infrastructure of the future.