A UAV Power Line Patrolling System With Edge Intelligence and Beidou SMS in Signal Loss Area

Effective power line inspection is crucial for power grid maintenance and management. To address the issue of signal loss or signal weakness in remote suburbs and deep mountains, we presented a UAV patrolling system with hybrid communication modules and edge detection capabilities. This system first features the communication ability in different scenarios including the extreme signal loss case by incorporating the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, short-message communication, the Internet of Things, and edge computing. Next, to accurately and timely detect the power line faults, such as exposed wire, thatch covering, and lead stem falling, under various conditions, an edge detection model employing YOLOv8 is proposed without the help of cloud centers and public communication networks. Finally, experiments are designed on our built UAV patrolling test bed with different use cases. Numerical results show that our proposed scheme could efficiently inspect the power line, especially in signal loss or weak areas, and have a high precision and low latency for line fault detection, compared to the YOLOv8 baseline algorithm.