8 research outputs found
Aerial Image Analysis using Deep Learning for Electrical Overhead Line Network Asset Management
Electricity networks are critical infrastructure, delivering vital energy services. Due to the significant number, variety and distribution of electrical network overhead line assets, energy network operators spend millions annually on inspection and maintenance programmes. Currently, inspection involves acquiring and manually analysing aerial images. This is labour intensive and subjective. Along with costs associated with helicopter or drone operations, data analysis represents a significant financial burden to network operators. We propose an approach to automating assessment of the condition of electrical towers. Importantly, we train machine learning tower classifiers without using condition labels for individual components of interest. Instead, learning is supervised using only condition labels for towers in their entirety. This enables us to use a real-world industry dataset without needing costly additional human labelling of thousands of individual components. Our prototype first detects instances of components in multiple images of each tower, using Mask R-CNN or RetinaNet. It then predicts tower condition ratings using one of two approaches: (i) component instance classifiers trained using class labels transferred from towers to each of their detected component instances, or (ii) multiple instance learning classifiers based on bags of detected instances. Instance or bag class predictions are aggregated to obtain tower condition ratings. Evaluation used a dataset with representative tower images and associated condition ratings covering a range of component types, scenes, environmental conditions, and viewpoints. We report experiments investigating classification of towers based on the condition of their multiple insulator and U-bolt components. Insulators and their U-bolts were detected with average precision of 96.7 and 97.9, respectively. Tower classification achieved areas under ROC curves of 0.94 and 0.98 for insulator condition and U-bolt condition ratings, respectively. Thus we demonstrate that tower condition classifiers can be trained effectively without labelling the condition of individual components
Automatic vision based fault detection on electricity transmission components using very highresolution
Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial TechnologiesElectricity is indispensable to modern-day governments and citizenry’s day-to-day operations.
Fault identification is one of the most significant bottlenecks faced by Electricity transmission and
distribution utilities in developing countries to deliver credible services to customers and ensure
proper asset audit and management for network optimization and load forecasting. This is due to
data scarcity, asset inaccessibility and insecurity, ground-surveys complexity, untimeliness, and
general human cost. In this context, we exploit the use of oblique drone imagery with a high spatial
resolution to monitor four major Electric power transmission network (EPTN) components
condition through a fine-tuned deep learning approach, i.e., Convolutional Neural Networks
(CNNs). This study explored the capability of the Single Shot Multibox Detector (SSD), a onestage
object detection model on the electric transmission power line imagery to localize, classify
and inspect faults present. The components fault considered include the broken insulator plate,
missing insulator plate, missing knob, and rusty clamp. The adopted network used a CNN based
on a multiscale layer feature pyramid network (FPN) using aerial image patches and ground truth
to localise and detect faults via a one-phase procedure. The SSD Rest50 architecture variation
performed the best with a mean Average Precision of 89.61%. All the developed SSD based
models achieve a high precision rate and low recall rate in detecting the faulty components, thus
achieving acceptable balance levels F1-score and representation. Finally, comparable to other
works of literature within this same domain, deep-learning will boost timeliness of EPTN inspection
and their component fault mapping in the long - run if these deep learning architectures are widely
understood, adequate training samples exist to represent multiple fault characteristics; and the
effects of augmenting available datasets, balancing intra-class heterogeneity, and small-scale
datasets are clearly understood
Human-Centered Explainable Artificial Intelligence for Anomaly Detection in Quality Inspection: A Collaborative Approach to Bridge the Gap Between Humans and AI
In the quality inspection industry, the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to advance to produce safer and faster autonomous systems that can perceive, learn, decide, and act independently. As observed by the researcher interacting with the local energy company over a one-year period, these AI systems’ performance is limited by the machine’s current inability to explain its decisions and actions to human users. Especially in energy companies, eXplainable-AI (XAI) is critical to achieve speed, reliability, and trustworthiness with human inspection workers. Placing humans alongside AI will establish a sense of trust that augments the individual’s capabilities at the workplace. To achieve such an XAI system centered around humans, it is necessary to design and develop more explainable AI models. Incorporating these XAI systems centered around human workers in the inspection industry brings a significant shift in conducting visual inspections. Adding this explainability factor to the AI intelligent inspection systems makes the decision-making process more sustainable and trustworthy by bringing a collaborative approach. Currently, there is a lack of trust between the inspection workers and AI, creating uncertainty among inspection workers about the use of the existing AI models. To address this gap, the purpose of this qualitative research study was to explore and understand the need for human-centered XAI systems to detect anomalies in quality inspection in energy industries
Image-based Decision Support Systems: Technical Concepts, Design Knowledge, and Applications for Sustainability
Unstructured data accounts for 80-90% of all data generated, with image data contributing its largest portion. In recent years, the field of computer vision, fueled by deep learning techniques, has made significant advances in exploiting this data to generate value. However, often computer vision models are not sufficient for value creation. In these cases, image-based decision support systems (IB-DSSs), i.e., decision support systems that rely on images and computer vision, can be used to create value by combining human and artificial intelligence. Despite its potential, there is only little work on IB-DSSs so far.
In this thesis, we develop technical foundations and design knowledge for IBDSSs and demonstrate the possible positive effect of IB-DSSs on environmental sustainability. The theoretical contributions of this work are based on and evaluated in a series of artifacts in practical use cases: First, we use technical experiments to demonstrate the feasibility of innovative approaches to exploit images for IBDSSs.
We show the feasibility of deep-learning-based computer vision and identify future research opportunities based on one of our practical use cases. Building on this, we develop and evaluate a novel approach for combining human and artificial intelligence for value creation from image data. Second, we develop design knowledge that can serve as a blueprint for future IB-DSSs. We perform two design science research studies to formulate generalizable principles for purposeful design — one for IB-DSSs and one for the subclass of image-mining-based decision support systems (IM-DSSs). While IB-DSSs can provide decision support based on single images, IM-DSSs are suitable when large amounts of image data are available and required for decision-making. Third, we demonstrate the viability of applying IBDSSs to enhance environmental sustainability by performing life cycle assessments for two practical use cases — one in which the IB-DSS enables a prolonged product lifetime and one in which the IB-DSS facilitates an improvement of manufacturing processes.
We hope this thesis will contribute to expand the use and effectiveness of imagebased decision support systems in practice and will provide directions for future research
Cumulative index to NASA Tech Briefs, 1986-1990, volumes 10-14
Tech Briefs are short announcements of new technology derived from the R&D activities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. These briefs emphasize information considered likely to be transferrable across industrial, regional, or disciplinary lines and are issued to encourage commercial application. This cumulative index of Tech Briefs contains abstracts and four indexes (subject, personal author, originating center, and Tech Brief number) and covers the period 1986 to 1990. The abstract section is organized by the following subject categories: electronic components and circuits, electronic systems, physical sciences, materials, computer programs, life sciences, mechanics, machinery, fabrication technology, and mathematics and information sciences