A Multi-UAV Approach for Fast Inspection of Overhead Power Lines: From Route Planning to Field Operation

摘要

Abstract Overhead power lines are critical infrastructures to ensure a reliable energy supply, and failures in the grid can lead to significant service disruptions. Locating these faults quickly is crucial but often challenging, especially in hard-to-reach areas such as mountainous regions. This paper presents an integrated solution for the long-range visual inspection of overhead power lines in minimum time using teams of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The solution, designed for effective field operation while meeting end-user requirements, comprises route planning, autonomous execution, and monitoring of the inspection mission. Concerning route planning, a capacitated min-max multi-depot vehicle routing problem has been formulated to compute feasible routes that cover the entire grid in minimum mission time. The method can be applied to heterogeneous multi-UAV teams in terms of inspection speed and battery consumption, which helps maximise the utilisation of available robots. Moreover, the planning method is complemented by an accurate battery-consumption model based on energy principles that captures the effect of parameters often overlooked such as UAV mass, inspection speed, and weather conditions. The model has shown estimates with relative errors not exceeding 1.34% compared to real measurements. The proposed solution has been experimentally validated under real-world conditions, enabling the autonomous multi-UAV inspection of more than 10 kilometres of real power lines in 13 minutes, which represents a time reduction of up to 67.21% compared to the state of the art. The resulting videos enabled the identification of a simulated power outage and its exact location.