[SOLVED] System Design for Drone Inspection and Analysis

 Introduction to the Project

This project utilizes drones in gathering crucial information in asset inspections. Features such as autonomous flight modes, sense and avoid technology, and other intelligent features increase safety and reliability while allowing operators to be quick and accurate while performing inspections. High precision GPS technology, in conjunction with Real-Time Kinematics systems, providing resistance to electromagnetic interference, enable drones to reliably hover around power lines and pylons. Zoom cameras with up to 30x optical zoom to allow close inspection of minute details while maintaining a safe distance. Dual mount visual and thermal imaging cameras allow operators to increase the ability to identify and locate faults in real-time or capture images or HD video with long-range remote transmission capabilities.

Drones are perfect for cataloging infrastructure over distances and vertical heights, delivering high-resolution imagery and thermal mapping of equipment status.

Finally, no wasted technician trips or unnecessary climbs!

Key Benefits

Capture valuable information about the condition of your assets, allowing you to make critical operational or maintenance decisions.

• Reduce costs – Keep your assets operational and minimize downtime.

• Rapid turnaround – Receive your inspection results within hours or conduct real-time assessments in the field.

• Minimize risk – Small, unmanned, and electric inspection platforms.

• Quality data – Detailed reports to help you plan shutdowns and maintenance activities.

• Reach – Get up and close to your less accessible assets.

• Storm or damage assessment – Fast visual inspections of power lines and cables can be performed, including structural, equipment, and cabling – quickly mapping long spans of a distribution network in a systematic way.

• Failing equipment detection – Advanced, high-resolution visual and infra-red cameras offer detailed imaging of current infrastructure status, with thermal imaging to detect overheating transformers, cables and other equipment.

• Prioritize personnel – Rapid, remote inspections allow you to prioritize your deployment of skilled personnel to trouble spots and for routine maintenance.

• Pre-Climb inspection – Your technician time can be optimized by flying a pre-climb inspection that quickly verifies issues and determines cable and equipment needs, and what parts and tools are required by the technician – avoiding multiple dangerous climbs and improving the safety record.

• Repair and Upgrade Logging – Drones can be used to catalog before-and-after after photographic records of repairs and upgrades. Change-detection software allows ongoing monitoring programs.

• Inventory – Cost-effectively inventory an entire system for accurate asset management. Our drones can cover your territory in ways that are cost-prohibitive manually.

Technologies Used

Best in class technologies are used in this project. These are mentioned below: 

1. AI Vision - AI vision will be used to extract useful information from the drone’s footage.

2. Deep Learning - Deep Learning will be used to train various neural networks to provide intelligence to the drone.

3. Edge Computing - Edge computing will be done on the drone itself. It will process the data in real-time and send the information to the server so that necessary actions can be taken right away.

4. Angular Js - It will be used to build a user-friendly front end of the web admin console and the analytics engine.

5. Node.js -  It will be used to build the back end of the web admin console and facilitate communication between, drone, server, and web admin console.

6. PostgreSQL - PostgreSQL will be used to store all the crucial data on the server.

7. Python - It will be used on drones to do edge computing.

8. Autonomous Flight - Autonomous flight of the drone will be provided by declaring waypoints.

9. GSM - GSM will be used by the drone to send information to the server by using cellular network’s internet.

10. GPS - Global Positioning System will be used to keep track of the location of the drone.

Web Admin Console and Analytics Engine

Our analytics engine automatically organizes and analyzes your drone data to deliver better and faster insight about potential problems. Web Admin Console will include the following features:

1. The health of the transformers - Health of the transformers can be monitored from this console. Notifications will be displayed for any critical events that get identified by the drone.

2. The health of the junctions on pole - Health of the junctions on the pole can be monitored from this console.

3. Electricity theft detection - Any occurrence of electricity thefts are notified at that very moment.

4. Monitoring of drone footage - Live footage of the drone can be monitored on the admin console in real-time.

5. Live location tracking - Drone’s live location can be monitored by displaying a pointer on the map.

6. Autonomous Flight - Waypoints can be declared for drones so that they can run autonomously.

7. Inspection reports - Automatic generation of inspection reports with inspection statistics, visual and vectorized inspection results.

Component/Devices Used

Components/Devices used in this project are as follows:

1. A high-performance drone - This drone has enhanced intelligent control systems, flight performance, and added flight safety and data security features.

2. Intel’s UP Squared AI Edge Computing Hardware - These boards are fast, high-performance x86 maker boards based on the Intel Apollo Lake platform. Features of the UP Squared Board are multiple USB 3.0 ports, double Gigabit Ethernet, and HDMI making it ideal for solutions in the Internet of Things (IoT). The vector units image processing unit and precision timing management synchronize the CPU with the I/O, making graphic processing effortless. With a 40 Pin I/O connector, expansion capabilities of the UP Squared go further with more possibilities.

3. Intel’s Movidius Neural Compute Stick 2 - This stick is used to provide processing power to the drone’s onboard computer.

4. A high-resolution camera with night vision - This camera is used to provide high-resolution video footage. It can also run in night vision mode.

5. A thermal imaging camera - It is used to obtain thermal imagery in order to identify hot and cool areas. Regions generating excessive heat may subject to hardware failure in the future. So, a notification is generated to inform the user/pilot about the situation.

6. A high-performance Server - This server is capable of executing complex AI deep learning algorithms. It is used to train, test, and deploy neural networks.

   
   

   
   

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