MAD Robot: Concept and Prototype Description of the Robot for Multi-Spectral Power Equipment Diagnostics. Part I

GNSS-Based Narrow-Angle UV Camera Targeting: Case Study of a Low-Cost MAD Robot

“…The following abbreviations are used in this manuscript: The hardware and software concepts of the MAD robot used in the current research were reported in [6,7]. To implement the relative targeting method proposed in this paper, we made multiple modifications to the software described in [6].…”

“…All the experimental studies in the current research were conducted using the MAD robot, which is described in detail in [ 6 , 7 ]. This robot ( Figure 3 ) has outer dimensions of mm (width × length × height).…”

“…However, even considering these deviations, the resulting positioning accuracy is sufficient to ensure the repeatability of the camera angles when repeating the same routes multiple times. This repeatability is essential for preparing datasets for artificial intelligence and machine learning methods [ 7 ].…”

“…The robot’s navigation system used in the current research is based on the ArduRover firmware [ 6 , 7 ]. Its default camera targeting procedure is implemented using the DO_SET_ROI command, which automatically evaluates the camera pitch and yaw angles based on the current robot position and orientation.…”

“…To maximize the resolution of the recorded images and video sequences, engineers often use cameras with narrow angles (high zoom ratio). When our Multi-Spectral Automatic Diagnostic (MAD) robot design was presented at the BUSSEC IEEE conference [ 6 , 7 ], it sparked an intensive discussion about whether the narrow-angle ultraviolet (UV) camera is critical for power equipment inspection and if there is a possibility to use wide-angle cameras to maximize the field of view (FOV) and significantly simplify the camera targeting. Thus, we decided to illustrate the importance of a narrow-angle UV camera in the inspection application with an example.…”