ABSTRACT
The opening part of the chapter discusses the automation of the inspection of power lines. Section 8.1 notes that society is becoming increasingly dependent on a reliable electric power supply. Since power outages cause substantial financial losses to producers, distributors, and consumers of electric power, it is important to minimize failures on power lines. To detect defects early and schedule the appropriate maintenance activities, the distribution networks are inspected regularly. The section says the inspection of overhead power lines is usually done manually, either directly on the lines or indirectly from the ground and/or from helicopters, but these tasks are tedious, expensive, time consuming, and dangerous. Robot-assisted inspection could be faster, cheaper, and more reliable, improving the long-term stability and reliability of the electric power supply. Most importantly, the safety of the inspection workers could be increased significantly. Section 8.1 surveys the requirements for robots used in power line inspections. It lists the key research problems and analyzes the advantages of flying and climbing robots. It proposes the development of a climbing-flying robot and assesses its possible advantages in terms of design and construction, inspection quality, autonomy, and universality.
Section 8.2 investigates the inspection of exterior building defects using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The process involves planning and pre-flight preparation, data acquisition using UAVs, image processing, and analyzing data from video to image. The section also explores the effects of buildings on the environment, in particular, through heat loss. It outlines the importance of thermal imaging and explains how unmanned aircraft classification can be adapted for use in thermal imaging studies.
Section 8.3 looks at the inspection of the technical condition of railway infrastructure using UAVs. Climate change is causing more landslides on the infrastructure network. Traditional mapping methods and methods for determining the volume, cross-sections, contours and other parameters needed in rock fall engineering analysis can be modified, improved, and even completely replaced by UAVs. The section also explores the possibility of using drones to evaluate the condition of the transport infrastructure network.
The use of drones to inspect other types of infrastructure, for example, waterways, is presented in Section 8.4. The section provides a theoretical framework to map the semi-structured terrains (emptied) of canal beds; in this proposed framework, a UAV system is used for the quantitative inspection of deposited silt.
