Enabling Robots to "See Dirt and Cracks," SingTown Technology Makes Power Transmission Line Maintenance More Efficient and Safer

In the daily maintenance of power transmission and distribution lines, insulators are highly susceptible to accumulating dirt and developing fine cracks due to prolonged exposure to wind, rain, high-temperature radiation, and dust pollution. Traditional manual cleaning and inspection methods are not only inefficient and high-risk but also make it difficult to accurately identify cracks with the naked eye.

Therefore, the power washing robot manufacturer plans to incorporate SingTown Technology's OpenMV intelligent camera vision module to achieve automatic detection of insulator cracks through image recognition after completing high-pressure water flow automatic cleaning operations.

The system requires the installation of a camera module next to the robot cleaning nozzle to capture real-time images of the insulator surface after cleaning. Using AI image analysis algorithms, it detects abnormal features such as "black line cracks, abnormal reflections, or damage marks" on the surface and outputs the inspection results. This enables full-process automation from "cleaning → inspection → result feedback," significantly enhancing the intelligence and safety of power inspections.

The intelligent detection module, built on the OpenMV machine vision platform, provides the power cleaning robot with efficient and low-power visual recognition capabilities.

During the cleaning operation, the robot utilizes high-pressure water jetting to clean the insulators, while the camera module simultaneously captures images of the cleaned surface. The edge detection, grayscale enhancement, and pattern matching algorithms of the OpenMV edge AI can quickly distinguish between "water stain reflections" and "crack defects." When continuous dark lines, irregular reflections, or interruptions in light patterns are detected on the surface, the system automatically identifies them as "potential cracks" and relays the results to the main control system.

This solution maintains stable and precise recognition performance even under complex outdoor lighting conditions, supporting dynamic exposure adjustment and real-time light compensation. Simultaneously, due to the adoption of an embedded edge deployment processing architecture, it can rapidly complete image capture and analysis on the robot side without requiring an external PC, with a full detection cycle controllable within 2 seconds.

SingTown Technology's OpenMV embedded vision module can automatically synchronize the detection area based on the angle and movement path of the robotic nozzle, achieving "simultaneous cleaning and identification," which greatly enhances operational efficiency. This system is particularly suitable for power transmission and distribution operation and maintenance enterprises as well as line cleaning equipment manufacturers, assisting them in creating integrated solutions that combine automatic cleaning, intelligent detection, and safety warnings, providing reliable visual support for the intelligent inspection of high-voltage equipment.