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, due to long-term exposure to wind, rain, high-temperature radiation, and dust pollution, are highly prone to accumulating dirt and developing fine cracks. 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 manufacturer of power washing robots plans to introduce SingTown's OpenMV intelligent camera vision module to achieve automatic detection of insulator cracks through image recognition after completing the high-pressure water flow automatic cleaning operation.

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

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

During the cleaning operation, the robot utilises high-pressure water jetting to clean the insulators, while the camera module simultaneously captures images of the cleaned surface. The edge detection, greyscale enhancement, and pattern matching algorithms of the OpenMV edge AI can quickly distinguish between "watermark 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 two seconds.

SingTown Technology's OpenMV embedded vision module can automatically synchronise 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.