Automated Inspection of Power Line Corridors to Measure Vegetation Undercut Using Uav-Based Images

Abstract

ABSTRACT:Power line corridor inspection is a time consuming task that is performed mostly manually. As the development of UAVs made huge progress in recent years, and photogrammetric computer vision systems became well established, it is time to further automate inspection tasks. In this paper we present an automated processing pipeline to inspect vegetation undercuts of power line corridors. For this, the area of inspection is reconstructed, geo-referenced, semantically segmented and inter class distance measurements are calculated. The presented pipeline performs an automated selection of the proper 3D reconstruction method for on the one hand wiry (power line), and on the other hand solid objects (surrounding). The automated selection is realized by performing pixel-wise semantic segmentation of the input images using a Fully Convolutional Neural Network. Due to the geo-referenced semantic 3D reconstructions a documentation of areas where maintenance work has to be performed is inherently included in the distance measurements and can be extracted easily. We evaluate the influence of the semantic segmentation according to the 3D reconstruction and show that the automated semantic separation in wiry and dense objects of the 3D reconstruction routine improves the quality of the vegetation undercut inspection. We show the generalization of the semantic segmentation to datasets acquired using different acquisition routines and to varied seasons in time.

Environment Perception Technologies for Power Transmission Line Inspection Robots

“…Because the method was based on specific assumptions, it could not be used in inspection tasks actually. Maurer et al [43] presented a means that used semantic segmentation based on FCN and multiview geometry. The flowchart is shown in Figure 3.…”

“…Nonetheless, their 3D reconstruction is in the preliminary stage. With regard to the ground surface, Maurer et al [43] completed the 3D reconstruction of power lines and the ground surface simultaneously. In light of the reconstruction of pylons, Chen et al [44] raised a model-driven approach to reconstruct pylons.…”

A Comprehensive Review of Micro-Inertial Measurement Unit Based Intelligent PIG Multi-Sensor Fusion Technologies for Small-Diameter Pipeline Surveying

“…(5) The integration of modern digital and intelligent pipeline technology, small-diameter pipeline inspection and surveying technologies, the Geographic Information System (GIS) [ 106 , 107 , 108 ], satellite remote sensing technology, and aboveground Unmanned Autonomous Vehicle (UAVs) detection technology are the major trends in the development of intelligent pipelines [ 109 , 110 , 111 ].…”

Crop Height Monitoring Using a Consumer-Grade Camera and UAV Technology

“…Digital surface models generated from UAV-borne sensor data capture are becoming useful tools in many applications such as rapid mapping for disasters (Batzdorfer et al 2017), heritage documentation (Chiabrando and Losè 2017), building inspection (Duarte et al 2017), power line corridors mapping (Maurer et al 2017), tree crown structure mapping (Hese and Behrendt 2017), wetland species mapping and coastal environmental mapping (Taddia et al 2017). For all these applications UAVs are used to collect data at very high spatial and/or temporal resolutions.…”