About The Project

This team's goal is to help Consumers Energy find an effective solution to investigating defective power lines using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Problem areas are defined as hot spots on power lines or equipment, which could indicate failure or pre-failure. Currently, the customer does not have an effective solution for remote inspection of their power lines. They require a project to investigate various imaging technologies for UAV inspections. Consumers Energy has provided the team with a UAV, although the research and development will be done on incorporating software on devices attached to the UAV. 

The objective is to create a system that allows a user to detect a defective power line and take a video of the area. The developed system should be capable of wirelessly transmitting video data to allow accurate reporting of problem areas.  After detection, the system will record two short video clips (via a thermal camera and a GoPro camera) and the corresponding GPS coordinates of the problem area.  These results would then be sent to the base station where the operator of the UAV is located. All problem areas are subsequently plotted on Google Maps for human review, and each plot point will contain the recorded video data.  After development, this system will be mounted onto the UAV.