Transmission Line Fault Location Based on Machine Vision and Laser Ranging

Abstract:

Combined with positioning technology and laser ranging technology, a novel method for transmission lines fault location is proposed by machine vision. The unmanned aerial vehicle carries a visible light camera for shooting work of transmission line. The aerial images are transmitted back to the ground station in real time for further processing. The image processing and pattern recognition methods are adopted to detect and recognize faults on transmission lines, where the mathematical morphology algorithms are applied in image processing. The initial positioning is used to obtain the longitude and latitude coordinates of unmanned aerial vehicle by using the inertial measurement system. An airborne laser ranging module is used to correct the coordinates by measuring the distance from the fault point to the unmanned aerial vehicle. Finally, accurate position coordinates of fault points are calculated after coordinate transformation between the space geodetic and space rectangular coordinate system as well as datum transformation between two rectangular coordinate systems. The positioning accuracy has been greatly improved and the space rectangular coordinate measurement accuracy can be as high as 0.11 m.

Key words:machine vision; laser ranging; transmission line; image processing; fault location