Research On UAV Path Planning Algorithm For Power Line Inspection And Forest Fire Monitoring

With the advance of science and technology and cost reduction,unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)is no longer limited to military purposes and also started its new discovery in civilian field,which has been widely used especially in the power grid inspection and forest fire monitoring.The effectiveness and efficiency of using UAV for automated power transmission line inspection is tightly related to the inspection paths designed for UAV.Different types of UAVs are suitable for different inspection tasks and have different requirements for path planning.In this thesis,the UAV inspection path is researched.The main works are as follows:(1)In view of advantages of quad-rotor UAV,this thesis have used and developed indoor and outdoor testing platforms.First,quad-rotor UAV’s flight principle is briefly introduced its mathematical model is also established.For available indoor QBALL UAV platform,baseline flight controller is implemented to achieve desired trajectory for automatic flight.For testing the path planning algorithms in outdoor environment for carrying out power line inspection mission,a quad-rotor UAV platform was built during this thesis work,which was integrated with a GPS receiver,a Pixhawk flight controller,color camera and 5.8G high-definition map.(2)Based on different features in the power transmission line inspection between tower and line corridor,the inspections missions are divided into two strategies:tower monitoring and line corridor monitoring.First,according to the characteristics of the tower monitoring,the quad-rotor UAV is used for the tower inspection.By considering the safe distance between UAV and the tower and the features of the camera,the genetic algorithm(GA)and ant colony algorithm(ACA)are used to design a suitable inspection path.Then,according to the requirements of the line corridor monitoring tasks,fixed-wing type of UAV is suggested to be used for long distance inspection.By using towers as the nodes and the transmission corridor as the path for UAV to follow and carry out power line inspection,smooth and achievable flight path has been generated based on symmetrical transition curve strategy.Simulation results show that the optimized path can make the UAV flight safe and efficient.(3)According to the features of different geographical environments in forests,monitoring missions for flat forests and forests in mountain areas are classified for the purpose of forest monitoring and fires detection.For flat forest areas detection,since UAV does not need to change the height frequently and the path planning mathematical model and objective function are established in two-dimensional formulation.Polar coordinate coding is used to overcome the restrictions of the maximum path deflection angle,the minimum step length and the number of the maximum path nodes.The GA and genetic simulated annealing algorithms(GSAA)are used to obtain safe and efficient inspection paths.For special environment of mountain areas forest detection,the three-dimensional space modeling should and has been developed.The heuristic function and the pheromone update rule are designed,and the ACA is used to optimize the inspection paths.The simulation results show that the algorithm investigated in this paper can find the optimal route for inspection purpose,which provides the basis for the practical application of UAV forest monitoring and fire detection.