Detection of Missing Insulator Caps Based on Machine Learning and Morphological Detection

Abstract

Missing insulator caps are the key focus of transmission line inspection work. Insulators with a missing cap will experience decreased insulation and mechanical strength and cause transmission line safety accidents. As missing insulator caps often occur in glass and porcelain insulators, this paper proposes a detection method for missing insulator caps in these materials. First, according to the grayscale and color characteristics of these insulators, similar characteristic regions of the insulators are extracted from inspection images, and candidate boxes are generated based on these characteristic regions. Second, the images captured by these boxes are input into the classifier composed of SVM (Support Vector Machine) to identify and locate the insulators. The accuracy, recall and average accuracy of the classifier are all higher than 90%. Finally, this paper proposes a processing method based on the insulator morphology to determine whether an insulator cap is missing. The proposed method can also detect the number of remaining insulators, which can help power supply enterprises to evaluate the degree of insulator damage.

Efficient Cross-Modality Insulator Augmentation for Multi-Domain Insulator Defect Detection in UAV Images

“…Therefore, as a low-cost, short-cycle, and highly maneuverable inspection method, drones are receiving increasing attention in power transmission line inspection [ 8 , 9 , 10 ]. By processing the images of transmission lines obtained through unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) inspection, it is possible to accurately detect hidden dangers in transmission lines, reduce the incidence of accidents, and improve the reliability of the power grid operating environment [ 11 , 12 , 13 ]. Processing and analyzing images captured by UAVs can effectively detect the positions of electrical components and provide technical support for autonomous inspections of transmission line components using UAVs, the autonomous navigation of UAVs, the automatic focusing of cameras, and defect identification.…”