Unmanned Aerial Vehicle for Transmission Line Inspection: Status, Standardization, and Perspectives

Abstract

As the biggest country in power consumption and generation, China owns the largest scale of transmission line worldwide. The application of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in inspection has been carried out for many years in China because of its strong adaptability and safety compared to the traditional manual way. For the further development of UAV application technology in transmission line inspection, China has accumulated rich experiences and greatly improved line inspection efficiency and formed a relatively complete UAV transmission line inspection standardization system including operation safety management, an equipment configuration method, and functional quality requirements. However, there still exist some obstacles that need to be tackled due to the fact that China’s UAV transmission line inspection standardization and its international promotion have not been thoroughly and comprehensively studied at present. Based on an in-depth analysis of China’s current UAV transmission line inspection standardization system, this study employs SWOT-PEST analysis to insightfully investigate international promotion opportunities/challenges under the current situation, upon which several constructive suggestions are proposed from four aspects of politics, economy, society, and technology. The ultimate purpose is to design feasible schemes to boost the international promotion of China’s UAV transmission line inspection standardization and further development of international UAV inspection technology.

Service Robots: Trends and Technology

“…The revision of the literature on service robots identifies diverse trends in the fields of healthcare, industry, home service, and multi-purpose indoor environments. Regarding the type of robots, trends in autonomous navigation [99,100], mobile robots [35], unmanned autonomous systems [101,102], and imitation learning systems [103,104] were identified.…”

“…Using robots to work continuously, text information from FAQs, call center response manuals, and office documents were used as input to a machine learning model to generate artificial conversation about bank services to interested customers. The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) has been reported in high risk tasks, such as transmission line inspection in China, Japan, Spain, and Britain [102]. By implementing UAV control and combining image processing and artificial intelligence, UAVs have performed autonomous inspection.…”

“…By implementing UAV control and combining image processing and artificial intelligence, UAVs have performed autonomous inspection. These types of robots use a combination of visible light and thermal infrared sensing, as well as LiDAR technology [102]. Although UAVs are useful for safety purposes, manual inspection still outperforms in some scenarios, and it can also perform repairs, while UAV cannot.…”

Research on UAV Three-Phase Transmission Line Tracking and Localization Method Based on Electric Field Sensor Array

“…With the continuous development of the power system, the scale of high-voltage overhead power lines has grown unprecedentedly, and in recent years drones have been widely used in the inspection of transmission lines [1]. Due to the low efficiency of manual drone inspection and the limited vision of the operator, it is difficult to visually inspect the distance between the drone and transmission lines and obstacles, once the risk of operational errors, which will cause the drone to crash and damage the transmission lines.…”

“…The research on applying electromagnetic field information in the space around overhead transmission lines to UAV inspection of transmission lines is relatively rare, and the current relevant research in this area is divided into three main areas: (1) research based on magnetic field information; (2) research based on electric field information; and…”