High voltage line distance measurement and position detection based on stereoscopic image

The automatic distance measurement from the high voltage line based on pattern recognition can be used for inspection of high voltage lines. The precise determination of the line position with respect to the measuring device allows to steer the device using the position data. The application example can be the autonomic flight of the flying apparatus along the line with preserving the constant distance from the line. Positioning and trajectory determination can be performed using the digital picture and the line visible in it. The position information can also serve to point other measuring devices. The paper presents a method of the automatic position determination with respect to the measuring device. The measurement uses the stereoscopic picture. The method has been divided into three parts. The first part contains the fast algorithm of the edge detection with the variable sensitivity. It is characterized by the maximum sensitivity to horizontal edges and no vertical sensitivity. The algorithm allows to reduce considerably the data contained in the picture. Thus it is possible to apply more time-consuming algorithms in subsequent processing steps. In the second part the wire detection and numerical shape approximation are performed. In the third part of the method the detected wire shape is used for stereoscopic distance measurement from the high voltage line. The performed experiment have shown the high effectiveness of the method.