A Multi-UAV Route Planning Method for Fast Inspection of Electric Power Transmission Lines

Electric power transmission lines are essential assets, and their maintenance is crucial to ensure a reliable service to society. However, with thousands of kilometers along the geography of any country, their inspection is costly and time-consuming. This paper proposes a route planning method for the fast inspection of power grids using a heterogeneous team of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles). Given a power grid, the planning method, formulated as a vehicle routing problem, minimizes the mission time that the multi-UAV team needs to visually inspect the entire grid. The method integrates models of energy consumption and considers the existence of recharging stations where the aerial robots can recharge their batteries for long-term operation. Moreover, a clustering strategy is also presented to reduce the computational burden of the planning problem without compromising the quality of the solutions. The performance of the resulting approach is analyzed in simulation under different conditions that show the benefits. Finally, experimental results in the Donana National Park (Spain) showcase the validity of the planning method for real-world applications.