2010 China International Conference on Electricity Distribution 1

Power Transmission Tower Type Determining Method Based on

Aerial Image Analysis

Jun Zhao
1,2
, Shu-tao Zhao
1
and Qi-neng Jiang
3


1
School of Electric and electronic Engineering of North China Electric Power University, Baoding 071003, China
2
Power Supply Bureau of Ordos 010406, China
3
Power Supply Bureau of Jiang Men, Jiang Men 529000, China
E-MAIL: zj0012@163.com, shutaozhao@163.com, and jqneng@126.com

Abstract: Using helicopter aerial inspection of power transmission line is an effective measure in complicated geographical
environment. At the present timethe inspection of the aerial image rely on manual observation, its efficiency is low and
undetected always happen by mistake or careless. An automatic analysis method by computer has been proposed to process aerial
video. After pretreatment, the image quality has improved. Edge detection is utilized to determine the target area of the image,
and tower contours is obtained by curve fitting. Based on variety tower features, template matching method is used to identify
the power transmission tower type. The analysis results of the aerial image showed that the identification method is feasible. It can
greatly reduce the labor burden of inspection, and improve the efficiency of aerial image analyzing.
Keywords: Aerial image; image processing; curve fitting; feature matching

1. Introduction
Transmission line tower is the infrastructures in the
power transmission system, and it is one kind of key
equipments in electric energy transmitting. To a large extent,
the running of power transmission system is determined by
the towers working condition. Transmission line corridor
cross-over unmanned area, traffic and communication blind
area, this lead to the difficulty of transmission line
periodically inspecting. An effective measure has been
proposed that using helicopter aerial inspection of power
transmission lines in complicated geographical
environment. Aerial inspection images contain a large
number of transmission lines running status information. At
the present timethe aerial image analyzing mainly rely on
manual observation, its efficiency is low and undetected
always happen by mistake or careless.
2. The Process of Tower Image Analysis
Tower is supporting overhead power transmission
wires and grounding wire line, and make between wire,
ground or across the property to maintain a certain distance.
Tower running state close to its shape changes, so some
tower-related faults can be determined from the aerial
image feature, and transmission line auto inspection level
can be greatly increased. However, the aerial image
background is very complex, there are many targets include
towers, insulators, wire and identification cards, etc., it is
very difficult to achieve automatic identification in fact.
With the development of computer and image
processing technology, according to aerial images tower
color, grayscale, and structural characteristics, power tower
fault automated diagnosis based on aerial image
recognition is presented in this paper. Determining the
tower types is the first step of automatic diagnosis the
transmission line faults.
As shown in Figure 1, the transmission line video
have been captured by digital camera, and the image frame
containing the independent tower can be obtained form the
video. In the process of image acquisition frequently leads
to image degradation. After the image frame can be get
from aerial video stream, and then pre-process about the

2 2010 China International Conference on Electricity Distribution
image background color and grayscale has been done, in
order to remove the specific color from color image.
Combined with the characteristics of the image gray tower,
the gray part irrelevant with the tower is removed.

Aerial Image Acquisition
Power Tower

Aerial Image
Pre-process
Aerial Image
Edge Detection
Tower Head
Feature Matching
Linear Profile
Curve Fitting
Tower Feature
Template Production
Determining Power
Tower Types
Figure 1. The image process of transmission towers
type determining
And then wavelet transform and combine with median
filter is utilized to achieve de-noising caused by the process
of image capture. And then image histogram equalization is
utilized to be strengthened the image edge information with
the image de-noised in pre-process. The next step is to
detect aerial tower image edge parts. The image edge points
are detected firstly, and the contour line can be determined
from edge points distribution. Through comparing the
corner edge points number and detected straight edge
number, some useless information about recognized target.
Parameter of the tower edges from the image is calculated,
this can be used to fit towers contour curve. Each tower
head has its own image features, these features would be
made matching templates. The extracted tower contour
feature is compared with the template, the type of towers
can be determined. In the image analysis, the tower feature
exacted and matching template selection are extremely
significant.
3. Tower Image Recognition Process
3.1 Image Pretreatment
In the aerial images, the color and edges of the power
tower may be blurry, target is covered by video subtitles,
even tower profile loss which cause difficulties to the
equipment type recognition. So the image preprocess
must be done to improve the image quality, smoothing filter
is used for blurring noise reduction in the image analysis.
Each pixel becomes a weighted average of its neighbors.
The aerial images of three colors including red, green
and blue, calculates the histogram, or pixel distribution,
take the appropriate color threshold color images canbe
transformed to grayscale. The prior knowledge is useful in
the color transforming. According to the histogram of the
image, the entropy of the histogram of an image with gray
levels in the range [0,N-1] is given by
1 1
1 1
0 0
0 0
( ) ( )
log
( ) ( )
i N i N
e N N
i i
i i
h i h i
H
h i h i
= =

= =
= =
=


(1)
where i is the gray level value, h(i) represents the
number of pixels in the image at each gray level value, N is
the total number of gray levels in the image.
It signifies the amount of with the black and white
pixels information associated with the histogram. The
optimal threshold (TH) is gray level value that maximizes
the entropy, as (2) shows.
1
0 ( , ) 50
( ) (2)
255 ( , ) 150
f x j TH
g x
f x j TH
< =
=

> =

Tower grey level is between 100 and 150 in the grey
images, after procees as (2) , the backgroud interference
is weakened (i.e., black for foreground and white for
background). After this course, the calculation interval
can be reduced greatly.
3.2 ROI Determined by Curve Fitting
Use fitting method contour to transform the aerial
tower linear curve into a contour curve and it is can be
utilized one of the template matching features. In the
process of curve fitting, use least squares method to fit the
existing points of a straight line. The method of fitting least
squares is to rely on the known data.
First, the parameters
( )
1 2
; , ,
m
f x a a a
should be
constructed to reflect the function of containing the
unknown and n data points
( ) , , 1, 2,
i i
x y i n = deviate
from the level as formula (3).
( ) ( )
2
1 2 1 2
1
, , ; , ,
n
m i m
i
J a a a y f x a a a
=
= (

(3)
then apply the mathematical methods to demand minimum
( )
min 1 2
, ,
m
c J a a a =
of function
( )
1 2
, ,
m
J a a a
,
here the value of
1 2
, ,
m
a a a is pending value what it
isdemand.
Such a set of values makes the function

2010 China International Conference on Electricity Distribution 3
( )
1 2
; , ,
m
f x a a a and n data points the closest in the
second square and the sense.
Figure 2 is the fitting results of cathead-tower head
plans first characteristic curve.


A. Tower straight contour B. Curve fitting of tower
Figure 2. Towers straight line contour fitting results
In the Figure 2 A, Straight line fitting process is as
follows:
The straight line equation of tower contour is obtained
previosly, the form of using linear least squares curve
fitting function containing unknown parameters like:
( )
1 2 1 1 2 2
; , , ( ) ( ) ( )
m m m
f x a a a a r x a r x a r x = + + +
(4)
where,
( )
k
r x
is a set of functions to be fitted and linear
equations,
k
a
is determined coefficient,
1, 2, , , k n n m = < .
To seek
1 2
,
m
a a a , make the function reflecting
the deviation
( )
1 2
, ,
m
J a a a
the minimum, only need to
use the necessary conditions
0, 1, ,
k
J
k m
a
c
= =
c

then
get the linear equations about
1 2
, ,
m
a a a :
1
1 1
1 1
( ) ( ) 0
( ) ( ) 0
n m
i k k i i
i k
n m
m i k k i i
i k
r x a r x y
r x a r x y
= =
= =
(
=
(

=
(

The equations can be simplified to
T T
R RA R Y = ,
including:
1 1 2 1 1
1 2 2 2 2
1 2
( ) ( ) ( )
( ) ( ) ( )

( ) ( ) ( )
m
m
n n m n
r x r x r x
r x r x r x
R
r x r x r x
(
(
(
=
(
(

1 2
( , , )
T
m
A a a a =
and
1 2
( , , )
T
n
Y y y y =

When
1 2
( ), ( ), , ( )
m
r x r x r x
is linearly independent,
T
R R
can be reversible, the equations
T T
R RA R Y = have a
unique solution. According to the linear theory of
least-squares fitting parameters, the solution of matrix A
constituting demanded parameters can be gained, using the
command in MATLAB \ A R Y = , obtain the demand
parameters directly.
3.3 Template Matching
In the recognition process of pole and tower Image
types, it should separate the image features of each tower,
using these characteristics to distinguish it with the other
towers. The difference between cathead-towers and glass
towers and other towers lies in the head shape, so in the
recognition process, it should be matched in accordance
with its characteristics of tower head. As for the corner
tower, its characteristic is the corner tower cross arm truss
structure. According to these features, the template of
image matching has been producted.


A.Ports of cathead-tower edge feature template


4 2010 China International Conference on Electricity Distribution

B. Ports of glass-tower edge feature template

C. Ports of corner-tower edge feature template
Figure 3. Some tower edge feature template
In contrast to the similarity of curve and fitting curve
in templates, the algorithm of NPROD is used to measure
similarity:
2
1
1 1
2
,
2
1
1 1
2
,
1 1
, ,
1 2 1 2
1 2
) , (
(

(
(

= = = =
+ +
= =
+ +
N
i
N
j
j i
N
i
N
j
v j u i
N
i
N
j
j i v j v i
Y X
Y X
v u R (5)
With the inner product form, it can be expressed:

| |
2
1
, ,
,
) )( (
) , (
Y Y X X
Y X
v u R
T
v u
T
v u
T
v u
= or
2
2
,
,
) , (
Y X
Y X
v u R
v u
T
v u
= (6)
It can be seen from the above equation, normalized
product is actually the cos between vector
, u v
X and
included angle Y , so it is only when
, u v
X cY
, then
have ( , ) 1 R u v , here c is a constant.
Otherwise ( , ) 1 R u v , therefore, NPROD algorithm is
not subject to scale factor errors. Determine the similarity
of 80% or more curves that matching of the characteristics
is successful, the tower type is identifyed. Take the image
of the same location at different times to measure the line
profile parameters and compare the results, and then judge
the state of the tower.
3.4 The Result Of Matching
In order to testify its feasibility, type classifications of
22 cathead-tower images, 4 Glass towers images and 3
corner tower images. These Images will be carried out.
cathead-tower will be numbered as M1-M22. Glass tower
will be numbered as J1-J4. (J2 includes a glass tower and
two cathead-tower, J3 consists of two glass towers). Corner
tower will be numbered as Z1, Z2 and Z3.
According to the tower features, the tower is
numbered according to its features. Such as: cathead-tower
is characterized by a1-a5, glass-tower is characterized by
b1-b5, corner-tower is characterized by c1 and c2. They
have 80% similarity. TABLEshows part of the tower
image and the template feature matching results.
TABLE Tower feature matching data analysis sheet
Tower Type
Cathead-towerM1-M22 Glass-towerJ1-J4 Corner-towerZ1-Z3
Matching
characteristics of the
template number
The number of
correct matches
The correct
match rate
The number of
correct matches
The correct
match rate
The number of
correct matches
The correct
match rate
a1 20 90.9% 0 0 0 0
a2 22 100% 1 50% 0 0
a3 18 81.8% 1 50% 0 0
a4 19 86.4% 1 50% 0 0
a5 20 90.9% 1 50% 0 0
b1 0 0 5 100% 0 0
b2 0 0 5 100% 0 0
b3 0 0 5 100% 0 0
b4 0 0 5 100% 0 0
b5 0 0 5 100% 0 0

2010 China International Conference on Electricity Distribution 5
c1 0 0 0 0 3 100%
c2 0 0 0 0 3 100%

Wine glass tower and the corner tower feature
matching results for all matches correctly. It is due to the
lack of tower sample. However, cathead-tower feature
matches correctly more than 80%. In the actual recognition
process, as long as two or more features have been
identified, the type of tower can be identified. Based on this
principle, in addition to J2, images of the remaining 28
towers can be recognized correctly. As Figure J2 contains
two cathead-tower and a glass tower, tower in larger
quantities and the resolution is not clearly. While J3
(includes two glass towers) matching results show that the
image contains more than one tower case, this
identification method also be applied.
4. Conclussions
Achieve the power transmission lines to automatic
inspection aerial images can greatly reduce the burden on
the labors. This paper presents a new method to identify the
images of the transmission equipments, it preprocess the
aerial images with the computer, combination the
characterize features of the towers in the images to detect
and use templates matching method for the aerial images
recognition, to determine the type towers. Through the
actual aerial images analysis demonstrated the feasibility of
this recognition algorithms, and further study the feasibility
of an automatic inspection aerial images, transmission lines
fault detection and rapid response service network with
unexpected incidents.
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