The Progress and Trend of UAV Power Line Inspection: A Bibliometrics-based Visualization Analysis

Abstract

<p> Background: The application of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is a major turning point in the history of power line inspection and is of increasing interest to a growing number of researchers. </p><p> Objective: This study aimed to clarify the research status, hotspots, and evolutionary trends of UAV power line inspection, to help researchers understand the dynamic evolution of research topics and provide guidance for future research directions. </p><p> Methods: 737 high-quality papers were collected from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) database from 2001 to 2023, and descriptive statistical analysis, cooperation network analysis, keyword co-occurrence analysis, keyword clustering analysis, and keyword citation burst analysis were conducted using VOSviewer and CiteSpace. </p><p> Results: The popularity of research in this field is increasing. Chinese academic institutions and scholars have made outstanding contributions. The level of cooperation between different countries, academic institutions, and scholars is low. The research on UAV power line inspection has a wide range of topics and obvious interdisciplinary characteristics, mainly focusing on fault detection and diagnosis, path planning, and the application of deep learning in intelligent inspection. The research hotspot and trend is the integration of artificial intelligence, deep learning, and modern information technology to achieve UAV autonomous intelligent inspection. Some of the challenges faced in the development of the field are also summarized and possible solutions are proposed. </p><p> Conclusion: This study provides a comprehensive and systematic review, and the results can provide a quick overview of the research status, hotspots, and evolutionary trends.