• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers P
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• v.60 no.4
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• pp.206-213
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• 2011

Line sleeves, which used to connect ACSR cables when transmission lines were constructing, sometimes cause power transmission failure due to deterioration and corrosion. Therefore, power transmission line should be inspected regularly to prevent national disaster. Current inspection tool detects insertion length of transmission line on line sleeves, the inspection tool includes enormous error by operator. Moreover, the system is not controlled remotely, negligent accident would be caused while inspecting. To deal with those problems, KEPCO reviewed several ways to inspect line sleeves and proposes new method to inspect line sleeve by measuring magnetic flex which penetrate junction of steel and aluminum sleeve. The developed inspection tool is reliable enough to detect eccentric sleeves. Also, the developed inspection device was applied on actual transmission line and verified its effectiveness.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.169-175
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• 2009

A new wire detection algorithm for power line inspection by a mobile robot has been proposed in this paper. There have been a lot of studies in order to support the high-quality electric power. For the high-quality power supply, it is necessary to investigate the power lines and insulators before the lines or insulators were disconnected or damaged. Although Korea Electric power Corp. has made many efforts for the quality improvement, it is not enough to inspect all the power lines by human inspectors. According to this problem, it is decided to replace the human operators by the power line inspection robot. When the robots are used for the inspection, there could be several advantages, for example, the working efficiency and the prevention of accident. And also the shortage of human power for dangerous jobs can be resolved. In this paper, as a part of the development of power line inspection robot, DICRO, the sensor fusion and fuzzy control algorithms are developed to detect the wire and slope of the wire. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithms is proved by the real experiments with DICRO which is under development so far.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.23-33
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• 2012

The current paper deals with a new live-line insulator inspection tool system that will be used by the Korea Electric Power Corporation for its 154 kV power transmission lines in 2011. Unlike the existing contact type tools, the developed inspection tool automates parts of the insulator inspection process using a sensor and an actuator. The tool sustains its weight independently, not by a lineman. In addition, the inspection tool measures the insulation resistance of an insulator together with its distribution voltage, thus providing more information for analysis and diagnosis. Such characteristics improve the system's operation efficiency, measurement reliability, and usability. We confirmed its effectiveness through live-line field tests with actual power transmission lines.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers P
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• v.59 no.1
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• pp.89-95
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• 2010

A new live-line insulator tester was developed to detect faulty insulators in 154kV power transmission lines. This paper is the second part of the two-part paper and deals with its inspection algorithm development. Unlike normal condition with low pollution and low humidity, the inspection data measured in the field under high pollution or high humidity showed that the voltage distribution of an insulator string has offsets in comparison with those of others and its insulation resistances are greatly decreased, which leads to wrong results of the existing inspection algorithms under such conditions. To solve this problem, we propose new diagnosis algorithms that can exactly detect faulty insulators from measured data regardless of environmental conditions. Its effectiveness was validated by live-line field tests in actual power lines.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.61 no.2
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• pp.194-198
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• 2012

This paper describes flying inspection apparatus for 22.9kV distribution line. This apparatus is composed of multi-copter(more than 4 propellers), camcorder and remote controller. The existing inspections, such as hot-line inspection job and optical inspection method and distribution Line Checking Robot, have many restrictions. A electric working vehicle and hot-line job license are essential in hot-line inspection job. Besides its high cost, it can't be applied to the electric pole over 18m and road-blocked area. Optical method can't inspect upper side of electric facilities mounted on the electric pole. Robot method can't be applied to the corroded overhead earth wire and nothing of overhead earth wire. To solve the problems, in Korea Electric Power Co., we have applied flying inspection apparatus to the 22.9kV distribution line. The results of trial application show that this paper is practical and effective for the inspection technical method in 22.9kV distribution line

• IE interfaces
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.58-67
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• 2010

The purpose of this paper is to present the development processes of the assembly line tester of power transmission for lift truck. Because power transmission is most important part of lift truck, all assembled powertrain parts must be inspected for operational defects, pressures and RPM. Developed assembly line tester is designed to take about 25 minutes for inspecting each assembled power transmission and located it at the end of assembled line. The assembly line no-load tester consists of three parts: (1) the driving hardware part; for installing and operating the transmission. (2) control PCB part; send data from sensors to a computer and control driving part, (3) operation software of no-load tester; for an automatic inspection or manual inspection, for database management and printing transcripts.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2008.10b
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• pp.373-374
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• 2008

To prevent an insulator failure, a new inspection system is presented for 154kV insulator strings. The inspection system detects fault insulators by measuring resistance and voltage of each insulators in the 154kV insulator string. The inspection instrument obtains autonomously insulation resistance and assigned voltage along the insulator string. The insulator inspection instrument is manipulated by two operators. In addition, a set of mechanism is applied to prevent the system from being reset under live-line condition. We confirmed its effectiveness through experiments.

• KEPCO Journal on Electric Power and Energy
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.271-278
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• 2020

KEPCO Research Institute developed a GIS-based autopilot drone inspection system for electric power facilities and since its pilot application in 2017, it has been successfully used to detect defects in power transmission lines. This paper presents how to operate this system in the field of power line inspection. Power transmission lines are located in a wide variety of environments such as plains, mountains, river crossings, sea crossings, and industrial areas. Among these, some transmission lines are difficult for human workers to access because of their geographies and some should be checked more often due to their severe contamination. Considering these field conditions, we classified drone operation in two categories to increase its effectiveness and efficiency - patrol surveillance and detailed inspection tasks. This paper describes the detailed procedures of the two tasks above and their field application experiences. In addition, this paper newly proposes how to construct public drone roads by using the information of KEPCO's power transmission lines.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.124-130
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• 2023

Implementing flexible production systems in domestic and foreign automotive design parts assembly has increased demand for automation and power reduction. Consequently, transition to a hybrid production method is observed where multiple vehicles are assembled in a single assembly line. Multiple robots, 3D vision sensors, mounting positions, and correction software have complex configurations in the automotive glass mounting system. Hence, automation is required owing to significant difficulty in the assembly process of automobile parts. This study presents a primer lighting and inspection algorithm that is robust to the assembly environment of real automotive design parts using high power 'ㄷ'-shaped LED inclined lighting. Furthermore, a 2D camera was developed in the primer coating inspection system-the core technology of the glass mounting system. A primer application demo line applicable to the actual automobile production line was established using the proposed high power lighting and algorithm. Furthermore, application inspection performance was verified using this demo system. Experimental results verified that the performance of the proposed system exceeded the level required to satisfy the automobile requirements.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.67 no.6
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• pp.773-781
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• 2018

In recent years, a study of power-line inspection using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has been actively conducted. However, relevant studies have been conducting power-line inspection with an UAV operated by manual control, and they have developed just power-line detection algorithm on aerial images. To overcome limitations of existing research, we propose a drone-based power-line tracking system in this paper. The main contributions of this paper are to operate developed system under configured environment and to develop a power-line detection algorithm in real-time. Developed system is composed of the power-line detection and the image-based tracking control. To detect a power-line in real-time, a region of interest (ROI) image is extracted. Furthermore, clustering algorithm is used in order to discriminate the power-line from background. Finally, the power-line is detected by using the Hough transform, and a center position and a tilt angle are estimated by using the Kalman filter to control a drone smoothly. We design a position controller and an attitude controller for image-based tracking control, and both controllers are designed based on the proportional-derivative (PD) control method. The interaction between the position controller and the attitude controller makes the drone track the power-line. Several experiments were carried out in environments where conditions are similar to actual environments, which demonstrates the superiority of the developed system.