Real-Time Object Detection on High-Voltage Powerlines Using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are gaining significant scientific interest in critical infrastructure inspection due to their flexibility, cost-effectiveness and advanced computer vision capabilities. This research focuses on high-voltage powerline surveillance, where automatic inspection is a priority for grid companies to prevent power failures. To address the need for real-time detection with limited computational power, we evaluate the recently developed object detection algorithm, YOLOvS. We propose a fine-tuned model trained on a custom dataset to detect key components, i. e. towers, insulators and conductors. The proposed method achieves an overall accuracy rate of 82.3% (mAp@O.S) and enables real-time detection, demonstrating its suitability for inspection tasks and visual-based navigation. Our model was also tested on a custom-built quadcopter with an Nvidia Jetson Nano (4GB) on board, achieving a frame rate of 33fps on live video under real environmental conditions.