Electric pole detection using deep network based object detector

Jun-ichiro Watanabe

doi:10.1117/12.2323773

9 October 2018 Electric pole detection using deep network based object detector

Jun-ichiro Watanabe

Proceedings Volume 10793, Remote Sensing Technologies and Applications in Urban Environments III; 107930M (2018) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2323773
Event: SPIE Remote Sensing, 2018, Berlin, Germany

Abstract

Efficient and safe facility maintenance has been a serious social problem due to the decline in labor force, facility deterioration over the years, and the rise of large-scale natural disasters. For electric power companies, maintaining and inspecting power equipment spread in wide areas is an important management issues to deal with. Identifying the electric poles that require maintenance is one of the essential inspection tasks. To identify the electric poles in an image, several methods focusing on their unique features such as color and shape have been proposed. However, this feature-based approach suffers from noise caused by shooting conditions. Another approach using a laser scanning technique requires high computational cost for handling the obtained point cloud data. We explored methods to efficiently detect the electric poles in a large number of images taken by a vehicle-mounted camera run in an urban area and its suburbs. Here, we show that a single shot MultiBox detector (SSD), which has been successfully used for object detection in an image, can be effectively applied to the task. We trained SSD models using around 600 supervised image data and evaluated the performance with 100 test images. In the evaluation, we examined whether pole-like objects such as telephone poles, traffic light poles, or trunks of trees can be distinguished from the electric poles. We also evaluated the influence of the background and exteriors attached to the pole. We found that the electric poles can be detected with an average precision (AP) of 72.2%. Our results demonstrate operational feasibility of the autonomous electric pole inspection system that implements a deep network based object detector.

Citation Download Citation

Jun-ichiro Watanabe "Electric pole detection using deep network based object detector", Proc. SPIE 10793, Remote Sensing Technologies and Applications in Urban Environments III, 107930M (9 October 2018); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2323773

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