I'm suggesting that hanging random amounts of weight off of power lines is probably not a great engineering plan, less so if the wind or heat or load picks up significantly. My concern isn't for the drones it's for the actual power infrastructure.
Are the drones designed for inspection or for heavy lifting and applying mechanical leverage against other objects? Are you so sure they're going to be able to do both?
It's trying to solve two problems at once, and while the solutions individually may be clever, combined they seem like a total waste and fraught with complications.
Really, you're overly negative. Those lines aren't light to begin with, wind and other issues you mention are just basic design considerations. And the important point is there are no good alternatives.
Really, my disposition has no bearing on the facts. They are designed to handle wind but I doubt those design parameters included random weights attached at random points between spans. The lines also change shape based on temperature.
If the clamp abrades the line under high wind conditions then you are weakening and possibly breaking the line. If the hardware that mounts the line to the tower can't handle the additional loading then you risk breaking it and dropping a live line on the ground.
No good alternatives? That's exceptionally unimaginative. The lines are strung up with towers. You could just put a station, on the ground, right at the base of the tower, where it would be much easier to directly connect it to the power lines in a safe and permanent way.
For the light drone they used in the paper they had a 5 to 10% cycle. It has no detection equipment on it. They're ultimately going to need a much heavier drone to actually do inspections. Which, if you're going to go the autonomous route, ground based charging becomes much more justifiable in terms of fixed cost.
Aside from that, they already have ground controlled attached cable "walking" drones in use by several providers and manufactured by several companies. Similarly to human inspectors you wouldn't deploy them on a windy day either and can have professionals ready and on scene in case any problems do happen.
Anyways.. the point of this paper is they've worked out the landing and release technology and can credibly claim continuous operation although with a very little flight time in between recharges. Which is great, but as an application to the inspection problem, I still maintain it's too clever by half.
This has applications, likely with custom drone only infrastructure, in which case you could do direct attachment and really speed up the charge time to something useful, but my strong guess is certainly not for autonomous inspections.
Are the drones designed for inspection or for heavy lifting and applying mechanical leverage against other objects? Are you so sure they're going to be able to do both?
It's trying to solve two problems at once, and while the solutions individually may be clever, combined they seem like a total waste and fraught with complications.