LiDAR-Based Real-Time Detection and Modeling of Power Lines for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Fábio Azevedo, André Dias, José Almeida, Alexandre Oliveira, André Ferreira, Tiago Santos, Alfredo Martins, Eduardo Silva
2019 Sensors  
The effective monitoring and maintenance of power lines are becoming increasingly important due to a global growing dependence on electricity. The costs and risks associated with the traditional foot patrol and helicopter-based inspections can be reduced by using UAVs with the appropriate sensors. However, this implies developing algorithms to make the power line inspection process reliable and autonomous. In order to overcome the limitations of visual methods in the presence of poor light and
more » ... oisy backgrounds, we propose to address the problem of power line detection and modeling based on LiDAR. The PL 2 DM, Power Line LiDAR-based Detection and Modeling, is a novel approach to detect power lines. Its basis is a scan-by-scan adaptive neighbor minimalist comparison for all the points in a point cloud. The power line final model is obtained by matching and grouping several line segments, using their collinearity properties. Horizontally, the power lines are modeled as a straight line, and vertically as a catenary curve. Using a real dataset, the algorithm showed promising results both in terms of outputs and processing time, adding real-time object-based perception capabilities for other layers of processing.
doi:10.3390/s19081812 fatcat:iuxvlk7fs5feblfggsh3sdcura