Viewpoint Optimization Using Genetic Algorithm for Flying Robot Inspection of Electricity Transmission Tower Equipment

To fully exploit the limited flight-time of the flying robot, and ensure the successful visibility of target, viewpoint optimization is proposed in this paper for the inspection of electricity transmission tower equipment with an optimization function to determine the best viewpoints in a local viewpoint region. The local viewpoint regions are generated from the local objective regions which are determined by the geometrical structure of a priori 3D model for the electricity transmission tower equipment. The optimization function is structured based on three factors including visibility, viewing quality and observation distance. In addition, the fitness function of genetic algorithm is used to find the optimal viewpoint. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed viewpoint selection algorithm.