Robust real-time UAV based power line detection and tracking

Abstract

Power line inspection is an essential but costly task while automated UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) inspection can greatly reduce such costs. However, navigating along power lines is a challenging task due to the narrow width and limited features of power lines. Existing power line tracking methods have threshold selection problems and cannot work well for complex and changing backgrounds. We make use of power line specific knowledge to build a model to achieve predictive and continuous parameter selection so that the best thresholds are selected for changing scenarios. Experimental studies show that our solution is much better than existing ones. Specifically, we have built the first fully automated UAV that successfully tracks power lines in the real world.