Abstract
The inspection and maintenance tasks of electrical installations are very demanding. Nowadays, insulator cleaning is carried out manually by operators using scaffolds, ropes, or even helicopters. However, these operations involve potential risks for humans and the electrical structure. The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) to reduce the risk of these tasks is rising. This paper presents an UAV to autonomously clean insulators on power lines. First, an insulator detection and tracking algorithm has been implemented to control the UAV in operation. Second, a cleaning tool has been designed consisting of a pump, a tank, and an arm to direct the flow of cleaning liquid. Third, a vision system has been developed that is capable of detecting soiled areas using a semantic segmentation neuronal network, calculating the trajectory for cleaning in the image plane, and generating arm trajectories to efficiently clean the insulator. Fourth, an autonomous system has been developed to land on a charging pad to charge the batteries and potentially fill the tank with cleaning liquid. Finally, the autonomous system has been validated in a controlled outdoor environment.
Highlights
The inspection and maintenance of power lines represent a significant economic cost for electricity supply companies
The results show that there is a big difference in application costs between using the system on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) or using a conventional hydro-pneumatic sprayer
The purpose of these DOFs is to allow the tool to aim at the insulator while flying, compensating for the oscillations and disturbances that the UAV might suffer
Summary
The inspection and maintenance of power lines represent a significant economic cost for electricity supply companies These tasks need to be performed periodically and can result in failures, leading to economic and material losses. Traditional monocular [8,9] and stereo [10] cameras have been implemented in aerial platforms to detect power line defects. Landing algorithms on power lines have been developed and validated in real environments with an aerial system composed of a LiDAR and a monocular camera for inspection and maintenance [11]. The main contribution of this paper is the design and experimental validation of a fully autonomous application for cleaning insulators on power lines.
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