Camera selection for unmanned helicopter power line inspection

This paper analyzes the demand of unmanned helicopter power line inspection system, and the detection range of camera is researched in detail. Johnson calculation criteria is used to calculate the suitable CMOS pixel dimensions and the focal length of lens. According to the calculation results, extensive experiments for camera payload were done using the unmanned helicopter. The dimensions of the CMOS camera and the focal length of lens were verified. We chose the suitable camera and lens by the experiments.