Towards visual based navigation with power line detection

Abstract

Due to the high costs of obtaining images of power lines from different perspectives and the logistic problems of manned flights, it is useful to develop methods for visual based navigation by using UAVs. For this reason, visual based navigation strategies for UAV power line inspection are presented; a virtual environment for real time simulation was developed and a set of line detection methods were integrated and validated within the virtual environment. The first strategy is related with the obtaining of the initial pose of the UAV with respect to the power lines. The second strategy is for navigating over the power lines. The navigation is performed by using the information extracted from a virtual camera in a visual control scheme.