Powerline Tracking with Event Cameras

TL;DR

This paper presents a real-time method using event cameras for robust powerline tracking with quadrotors, significantly outperforming existing approaches in persistence and speed under challenging conditions.

Contribution

Introduces a novel event camera-based powerline tracking method that detects and tracks multiple lines in real time onboard drones, handling fast motions and lighting challenges.

Findings

Tracks powerlines with a mean lifetime 10x longer than previous methods.

Operates at up to 320,000 events per second in real-world flights.

Runs onboard on quadrotors for autonomous inspection.

Abstract

Autonomous inspection of powerlines with quadrotors is challenging. Flights require persistent perception to keep a close look at the lines. We propose a method that uses event cameras to robustly track powerlines. Event cameras are inherently robust to motion blur, have low latency, and high dynamic range. Such properties are advantageous for autonomous inspection of powerlines with drones, where fast motions and challenging illumination conditions are ordinary. Our method identifies lines in the stream of events by detecting planes in the spatio-temporal signal, and tracks them through time. The implementation runs onboard and is capable of detecting multiple distinct lines in real time with rates of up to $320$ thousand events per second. The performance is evaluated in real-world flights along a powerline. The tracker is able to persistently track the powerlines, with a mean lifetime of the line $10\times$ longer than existing approaches.