Research on Auto-Tracking Algorithm for Power Line Inspection Based on Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

As a new method for power line inspection, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based inspection is efficient and low-cost. Since the flight speed of UAV is fast, target auto-tracking and photographing of the airborne equipments including visual-light camera, infrared thermal imager and ultraviolet imager, is a very important and useful function. In this work, a power line inspection system suitable for UAV-based inspection is built, and based on this system, an auto-tracking algorithm used for UAV power line inspection is proposed. Theories including coordinate transformation of three coordinate systems (geodetic coordinate system, geocentric rectangular coordinate system and NEU coordinate system) and spherical approximation method of treating arc length as chord length are applied to this auto-tracking algorithm. Through this algorithm, airborne cameras' shooting angle can be automatically modified to keep tracking and photographing power line during the inspection, using the real-time captured GPS data of UAV. The requirements on GPS positioning accuracy for the algorithm are also discussed in this work.