Survey and Evaluation of Sensors for Overhead Cable Detection using UAVs

Abstract

Inspecting overhead cables using autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is an affordable and promising future solution for providing a clear picture of the energy infrastructure. However, most of today's UAVs for powerline inspection are designed to use the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) to follow the power pylons which compromises the detection accuracy. In this paper, we provide an overview of the current state-of-the-art in sensors that can be used to remotely detect power lines using UAVs. The work compares 20+ low-cost, low-power, and light-weight sensors. The performance of 6 different kinds of sensors is evaluated thoroughly in a real outdoor powerline test setup using a custom UAV. The sensor data is obtained and analyzed using Robot Operating System (ROS) and is provided openly.