Large-scale power inspection: A deep reinforcement learning approach

Power inspection plays an important role in ensuring the normal operation of the power grid. However, inspection of transmission lines in an unoccupied area is time-consuming and labor-intensive. Recently, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) inspection has attracted remarkable attention in the space-ground collaborative smart grid, where UAVs are able to provide full converge of patrol points on transmission lines without the limitation of communication and manpower. Nevertheless, how to schedule UAVs to traverse numerous, dispersed target nodes in a vast area with the least cost (e.g., time consumption and total distance) has rarely been studied. In this paper, we focus on this challenging and practical issue which can be considered as a family of vehicle routing problems (VRPs) with regard to different constraints, and propose a Diverse Trajectory-driven Deep Reinforcement Learning (DT-DRL) approach with encoder-decoder scheme to tackle it. First, we bring in a threshold unit in our encoder for better state representation. Secondly, we realize that the already visited nodes have no impact on future decisions, and then devise a dynamic-aware context embedding which removes irrelevant nodes to trace the current graph. Finally, we introduce multiply decoders with identical structure but unshared parameters, and design a Kullback-Leibler divergence based regular term to enforce decoders to output diverse trajectories, which expands the search space and enhances the routing performance. Comprehensive experiments on five types of routing problems show that our approach consistently outperforms both DRL and heuristic methods by a clear margin

Transmission Line Equipment Infrared Diagnosis Using an Improved Pulse-Coupled Neural Network

In order to detect the status of power equipment from infrared transmission line images under the spatial positioning relationship of the transmission line equipment, such as corridor, substation equipment, and facilities, this paper presents an improved PCNN model which merges an optimized parameter setting method. In this PCNN model, the original iteration mechanism is abandoned, and instead, the thresholding model is built by the maximum similarity thresholding rule. To ensure similarity during classifying neighboring neurons into cluster centers, a local clustering strategy is used for setting the linking coefficient, thus improving the efficiency of the method to detect the power equipment in infrared transmission line images. Finally, experimental results on transmission line infrared images show that the proposed method can provide the basis for the diagnosis of power equipment, preventing the casualties and property damage caused by the thermal damage of power equipment, and effectively improving the safety risk identification and operation control ability of power grid engineering