A Frequency-Domain Approach for Detecting Overhead Conductors in Aerial Images

Robustly identifying overhead conductors from aerial images taken by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) is a necessary first step in assessing their condition. However, the detection method must reject other visually similar spurious lines such as other conductors, edges of a roof, or even gaps in the concrete slabs. Our proposed method makes use of a conductor's unique winding characteristic in the Fourier space to deliver at least a 98.2% conductor detection rate in our datasets. The method can also be generalized to other conductor types given their strand winding characteristics, and is reliable for those edge cases where suspicious false conductors are both close to and parallel with the target conductor. In these difficult, but surprisingly common scenarios, the conductor's unique frequency identity proves a resilient feature to use. This proposed conductor detection pipeline has been put in practical use by a commercial lines company.