Drone-Based Ceramic Insulators Condition Monitoring

Abstract

This article develops a prototype quadcopter drone-based system for inspection of power-line ceramic insulators. The drone uses its onboard cameras and Raspberry Pi single-board computer to monitor the health condition of outdoor ceramic insulators. The main contribution of this article is the development of a complete quadcopter-based system prototype for overhead power-line ceramic insulators inspection. The system is capable of performing the required computer vision routines for insulator health monitoring, either onboard or on an onshore ground station computer. In the onshore mode of operation, the drone captures images as it flies and simultaneously sends them to the onshore ground station. The developed system is tested in real life on a small-scale model frame, on which insulators are mounted. The results presented in this article show that quadcopter-based insulator inspection can be carried out successfully using both onshore and onboard computer vision techniques, with acceptable quality in terms of precision and computer vision time.