Visual localisation of electricity pylons for power line inspection

dc.contributor.advisorNicolls, Frederick
dc.contributor.authorAli, Emmanuel Yahi
dc.date.accessioned2023-09-08T09:51:43Z
dc.date.available2023-09-08T09:51:43Z
dc.date.issued2023
dc.date.updated2023-09-08T09:51:02Z
dc.description.abstractInspection of power infrastructure is a regular maintenance event. To date the inspection process has mostly been done manually, but there is growing interest in automating the process. The automation of the inspection process will require an accurate means for the localisation of the power infrastructure components. In this research, we studied the visual localisation of a pylon. The pylon is the most prominent component of the power infrastructure and can provide a context for the inspection of the other components. Point-based descriptors tend to perform poorly on texture less objects such as pylons, therefore we explored the localisation using convolutional neural networks and geometric constraints. The crossings of the pylon, or vertices, are salient points on the pylon. These vertices aid with recognition and pose estimation of the pylon. We were successfully able to use a convolutional neural network for the detection of the vertices. A model-based technique, geometric hashing, was used to establish the correspondence between the stored pylon model and the scene object. We showed the effectiveness of the method as a voting technique to determine the pose estimation from a single image. In a localisation framework, the method serves as the initialization of the tracking process. We were able to incorporate an extended Kalman filter for subsequent incremental tracking of the camera relative to the pylon. Also, we demonstrated an alternative tracking using heatmap details from the vertex detection. We successfully demonstrated the proposed algorithms and evaluated their effectiveness using a model pylon we built in the laboratory. Furthermore, we revalidated the results on a real-world outdoor electricity pylon. Our experiments illustrate that model-based techniques can be deployed as part of the navigation aspect of a robot.
dc.identifier.apacitationAli, E. Y. (2023). <i>Visual localisation of electricity pylons for power line inspection</i>. (). ,Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment ,Department of Electrical Engineering. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/11427/38459en_ZA
dc.identifier.chicagocitationAli, Emmanuel Yahi. <i>"Visual localisation of electricity pylons for power line inspection."</i> ., ,Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment ,Department of Electrical Engineering, 2023. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/38459en_ZA
dc.identifier.citationAli, E.Y. 2023. Visual localisation of electricity pylons for power line inspection. . ,Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment ,Department of Electrical Engineering. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/38459en_ZA
dc.identifier.ris TY - Doctoral Thesis AU - Ali, Emmanuel Yahi AB - Inspection of power infrastructure is a regular maintenance event. To date the inspection process has mostly been done manually, but there is growing interest in automating the process. The automation of the inspection process will require an accurate means for the localisation of the power infrastructure components. In this research, we studied the visual localisation of a pylon. The pylon is the most prominent component of the power infrastructure and can provide a context for the inspection of the other components. Point-based descriptors tend to perform poorly on texture less objects such as pylons, therefore we explored the localisation using convolutional neural networks and geometric constraints. The crossings of the pylon, or vertices, are salient points on the pylon. These vertices aid with recognition and pose estimation of the pylon. We were successfully able to use a convolutional neural network for the detection of the vertices. A model-based technique, geometric hashing, was used to establish the correspondence between the stored pylon model and the scene object. We showed the effectiveness of the method as a voting technique to determine the pose estimation from a single image. In a localisation framework, the method serves as the initialization of the tracking process. We were able to incorporate an extended Kalman filter for subsequent incremental tracking of the camera relative to the pylon. Also, we demonstrated an alternative tracking using heatmap details from the vertex detection. We successfully demonstrated the proposed algorithms and evaluated their effectiveness using a model pylon we built in the laboratory. Furthermore, we revalidated the results on a real-world outdoor electricity pylon. Our experiments illustrate that model-based techniques can be deployed as part of the navigation aspect of a robot. DA - 2023_ DB - OpenUCT DP - University of Cape Town KW - Electricity Pylons LK - https://open.uct.ac.za PY - 2023 T1 - Visual localisation of electricity pylons for power line inspection TI - Visual localisation of electricity pylons for power line inspection UR - http://hdl.handle.net/11427/38459 ER - en_ZA
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11427/38459
dc.identifier.vancouvercitationAli EY. Visual localisation of electricity pylons for power line inspection. []. ,Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment ,Department of Electrical Engineering, 2023 [cited yyyy month dd]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/38459en_ZA
dc.language.rfc3066eng
dc.publisher.departmentDepartment of Electrical Engineering
dc.publisher.facultyFaculty of Engineering and the Built Environment
dc.subjectElectricity Pylons
dc.titleVisual localisation of electricity pylons for power line inspection
dc.typeDoctoral Thesis
dc.type.qualificationlevelDoctoral
dc.type.qualificationlevelPhD
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