Design And Development Of Vision System For Power-line Insulator Robot

Because insulator contamination is very easy to have a serious impact on the stable operation of power-lines,it is necessary to carry out regular maintenance.Compared with manual on-line maintenance,it is more safe and efficient to use power-line robot with vision control function.However,the existing power-line robot still needs to be remote-controlled for on-line operation,and its vision system does not have vision control function.At the same time,the research on insulator image processing algorithm is mostly based on computer,and there is almost no research about vision control system embedded hardware platform.In order to meet the need of power-line robots to realize automatic maintenance of insulators through vision control assistance,the function and the structure of power-line robot are firstly analyzed and discussed,and an overall design of robot system is given including the hardware and software part design of vision and mechanical control subsystem.Then,the embedded hardware platform of insulator robot's vision system is developed with emphasis on the selection of hardware chips and the realization of peripheral interface driver programs.Finally,the vision processing algorithm of insulator robot is designed,which consists of on-line insulator extraction algorithm and spatial control parameter acquisition algorithm.The on-line insulator extraction algorithm is designed on the basis of the existing computer-based algorithm,which can be used to extract the image of insulator on the designed embedded vision system's hardware platform;The on-line insulator spatial control parameter acquisition algorithm is given on the basis of analysis of insulator's imaging state,distance measurement geometry model and coordinate reference system,by which the relative distance and inclination angle of insulator can be measured after the insulator image is extracted.The experimental results show that the designed insulator robot vision system can operate safely and reliably,and realize the basic functions of image acquisition,display,storage and serial communication smoothly;on the other hand,it can also effectively extract insulator image and accurately obtain insulator's parameters of distance and angle.The measured distance error rate is basically within 3%,angular error is 0.4°~4°,and hardware processing speed of the entire image is about 3 seconds,which achieves the expected effect and design requirements.