Efficient Path Planning Methods for UAVs Inspecting Power Lines

Power line inspection is one of the most difficult and time consuming steps in power line maintenance. Even for a sizeable group of workers it takes months to inspect all of them, especially when they are not visible from the road and must be inspected on foot or with an aerial vehicle. That problem is even more prominent when the inspection must be done as fast as possible when the power cuts out in certain regions after natural disaster. To save time and reduce expenditure Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) could be used to film the power lines and automatically find problems (e.g. a broken cable or a tree branch too close to the a line). Our research focuses on planning the route for the survey.