Abstract
In power inspection tasks, the insulator and spacer are important inspection objects. UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) power inspection is becoming more and more popular. However, due to the limited computing resources carried by a UAV, a lighter model with small model size, high detection accuracy, and fast detection speed is needed to achieve online detection. In order to realize the online detection of power inspection objects, we propose an improved SSD (single shot multibox detector) insulator and spacer detection algorithm using the power inspection images collected by a UAV. In the proposed algorithm, the lightweight network MnasNet is used as the feature extraction network to generate feature maps. Then, two multiscale feature fusion methods are used to fuse multiple feature maps. Lastly, a power inspection object dataset containing insulators and spacers based on aerial images is built, and the performance of the proposed algorithm is tested on real aerial images and videos. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can efficiently detect insulators and spacers. Compared with existing algorithms, the proposed algorithm has the advantages of small model size and fast detection speed. The detection accuracy can achieve 93.8%. The detection time of a single image on TX2 (NVIDIA Jetson TX2) is 154 ms and the capture rate on TX2 is 8.27 fps, which allows realizing online detection.
Highlights
The insulator and spacer are important components of power transmission lines
The spacer can fix the spacing between split wires, prevent whipping between wires, and suppress breeze vibration
unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) are flexible and have high inspection efficiency [7,8], and they are widely used in daily inspections
Summary
The insulator and spacer are important components of power transmission lines. The insulator can achieve electrical insulation and mechanical fixation. The health status of insulators and spacers has an important impact on the stable and safe operation of high-voltage transmission lines [1]. It is necessary to periodically inspect the transmission line components, e.g., insulators and spacers. The common transmission line inspection methods mainly include manual inspection, robot-based inspection, and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based inspection [2,3]. Manual inspection of electric power exposes the inspection staff to certain dangers and the operation efficiency is not high. UAVs are flexible and have high inspection efficiency [7,8], and they are widely used in daily inspections
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