A new design of a flying robot, with advanced computer vision techniques to perform self-maintenance of smart grids

Abstract: In this paper, we present a full design of a flying robot to investigate the state of power grid components and to perform the appropriate maintenance procedures according to each fail or defect that could be recognized. To realize this purpose; different types of sensors including thermal and aerial vision-based systems are employed in this design. The main features and technical specifications of this robot are presented and discussed here in detail. Some essential and advanced computer vision techniques are exploited in this work to take some readings and measurements from the robot's surroundings. From each given image, many sub-images containing different electrical components are extracted using a new region proposal approach that relies on Discrete Wavelet Transform, to be classified later by utilizing a Convolutional Neural Network.