Vision based inspection of transmission lines using unmanned aerial vehicles

Power systems currently face several challenges in order to address the growing need for sustainable energy worldwide. In this context, nowadays several tasks either directly or indirectly related to power systems can be automated to guarantee their continuous operation. The surveillance and inspection of transmission lines represents a necessary task to meet the energy demands by the commercial and industrial customers. Since power-lines can be thought as hostile environments for humans it is thus necessary to develop new techniques to improve this process, to reduce costs, to improve response times and more important, to avoid operational risks. Although there has been an incipient development of robotic applications in several areas of power systems, it is still a technology under research and development, since it is highly dependent on the nature of the task to be performed and no unified framework of applications exists. This article aims to present the preliminary system for tracking transmission lines based on detection of wires through artificial vision. The system is mounted on a robotic arm, simulating an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) which uses the transmission lines detection to position itself. The same system will be used later to inspect the state of the transmission line with the aim of reporting such state and to offer corrective guidelines against damages or problems in the power system if necessary.

I. Introduction

Demographic and economic expansion of countries have led to an increase in demand for electrical energy, thus requiring larger and more complex power systems. This complexity has a direct toll on inspection and maintenance and the occurrence of blackouts in different electrical networks worldwide exposes the vulnerability of these power systems. A clear example of the fragility of power systems occurred on September 24th, 2011, in Chile, due to a fault in the transformer 500V / 230V from electrical substation in Ancoa, causing a blackout of the national power system. It affected approximately 9 million people and interrupted normal operations in several copper mines which immediately impacted on the local economy of Chile [1].