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http://dx.doi.org/10.18770/KEPCO.2018.04.02.115

Patrol Monitoring Plan for Transmission Towers with a Commercial Drone and its Field Tests  

Kim, Seok-Tae (KEPCO Research Institute, Korea Electric Power Corporation)
Park, Joon-Young (KEPCO Research Institute, Korea Electric Power Corporation)
Lee, Jae-Kyung (KEPCO Research Institute, Korea Electric Power Corporation)
Ham, Ji-Wan (KEPCO Research Institute, Korea Electric Power Corporation)
Choi, Min-Hee (KEPCO Research Institute, Korea Electric Power Corporation)
Publication Information
KEPCO Journal on Electric Power and Energy / v.4, no.2, 2018 , pp. 115-123 More about this Journal
Abstract
Various types of robots running on power transmission lines have been developed for the purpose of line patrol monitoring. They usually have complex mechanism to run and avoid obstacles on the power line, but nevertheless did not show satisfactory performance for going over the obstacles. Moreover, they were so heavy that they could not be easily installed on the lines. To compensate these problems, flying robots have been developed and recently, multi-copter drones with flight stability have been used in the electric power industry. The drones could be remotely controlled by human operators to monitor power distribution lines. In the case of transmission line patrol, however, transmission towers are huge and their spans are very long, and thus, it is very difficult for the pilot to control the patrol drones with the naked eye from a long distance away. This means that the risk of a drone crash onto electric power facilities always resides. In addition, there exists another danger of electromagnetic interference with the drones on autopilot waypoint tracking under ultra-high voltage environments. This paper presents a patrol monitoring plan of autopilot drones for power transmission lines and its field tests. First, the magnetic field effect on an autopilot patrol drone is investigated. Then, how to build the flight path to avoid the magnetic interference is proposed and our autopilot drone system is introduced. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed patrol plan is confirmed through its field test results in the 154 kV, 345 kV and 765 kV transmission lines in Chungcheongnam-do.
Keywords
Transmission Line; Commercial Drone; Patrol;
Citations & Related Records
Times Cited By KSCI : 1  (Citation Analysis)
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