Semiautomatic apparatus for condition-based maintenance of railway pantograph

An apparatus for the inspection of railway pantographs, comprising:

• a mechanical structure including a main body and connecting structures suitable for detachably connecting the main body with a fixed frame of a railway pantograph;
• and
• a hybrid transmission, comprising:
• at least one flexible and substantially inextensible connecting element associated at one end with the main body and detachably associated at a second end, in a first operational configuration of the apparatus, with a mechanism of the pantograph;
• rigid transmission elements suitable to be connected, in a second operational configuration of the apparatus, on the one end to the main body and to the second end of the flexible connecting elements and on the second end to the mechanism;
• a first actuating unit arranged to exert a direct tractive force on the flexible and substantially inextensible connecting element in a direction of the only degree of freedom of the pantograph mechanism and in such a direction as to oppose the lifting of the mechanism itself, so determining the height position of the mechanism;
• and
• a second actuating unit arranged to impose an alternating vibratory movement in the direction of the only degree of freedom of the pantograph mechanism on the rigid transmission elements;
• wherein, in the first operational configuration, the pantograph mechanism is subject to a traction action of the flexible connecting element determining its height position, wherein, in the second operational configuration, the pantograph mechanism is subject simultaneously to the traction action of the flexible connecting element determining its height position and to the action of the rigid connecting elements transferring to it the alternating vibratory movement of the second actuating unit.