Abstract
During an automatic power transmission line inspection, a large number of images are collected by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to detect existing defects in transmission line components, especially insulators. However, with twin insulator strings in the inspection images, when the umbrella skirts of the rear string are obstructed by the front string, defect detection becomes difficult. To solve this problem, we propose a method to detect self-shattering defects of insulators based on spatial features contained in images. Firstly, the images are segmented according to the particular color features of glass insulators, and the main axes of insulator strings in the images are adjusted to the horizontal direction. Then, the connected regions of insulators in the images are marked. After that, the vertical lengths of the regions, the number of insulator pixels in the regions, as well as the horizontal distances between two adjacent connected regions are selected as spatial features, based on which defect discriminants are formulated. Finally, experiments are performed using the proposed formula to detect self-shattering defects in the insulators, using the spatial distribution of the connected regions to locate the defects. The experiment results indicate that the proposed method has good detection accuracy and localization precision.
Highlights
In recent years, the difficulty of conducting manual inspections on transmission lines has been increasing with the enlargement of transmission lines
Aiming at the above deficiencies and inspired by the literature [20], in this paper, we propose a self-shattering defect detection method for obstructed or unobstructed twin insulator string images based on the obvious spatial features of the insulator regions
The main technical contributions made in this work include: (1) For images of twin glass insulator strings, the self-shattering defect can be detected and the defect position can be located accurately, regardless of whether the insulators are obstructed or not; and (2) robustness and real-time performance is evaluated, and they may meet the requirements of strong robustness and high real-time performance demands of power line inspection
Summary
The difficulty of conducting manual inspections on transmission lines has been increasing with the enlargement of transmission lines. In the process of transmission line inspections, insulators in the aerial images are often obstructed and connected to each other because of the influence of the shooting distance and angle. Aiming at the above deficiencies and inspired by the literature [20], in this paper, we propose a self-shattering defect detection method for obstructed or unobstructed twin insulator string images based on the obvious spatial features of the insulator regions. The main technical contributions made in this work include: (1) For images of twin glass insulator strings, the self-shattering defect can be detected and the defect position can be located accurately, regardless of whether the insulators are obstructed or not; and (2) robustness and real-time performance is evaluated, and they may meet the requirements of strong robustness and high real-time performance demands of power line inspection.
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