Enabling Robots to 'See Dirt and Cracks', SingTown Technology Enhances the Efficiency and Safety of Power Transmission Line Maintenance

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's OpenMV intelligent camera vision module to enable 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. AI image analysis algorithms are used to determine whether abnormal features such as "black line cracks, abnormal reflections, or damage marks" are present on the surface, and the detection results are output. This achieves full-process automation from "cleaning → detection → result feedback," significantly enhancing the intelligence level and safety of power inspections.

The intelligent detection module, developed based 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 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 swiftly 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 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 significantly 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. It provides reliable visual support for the intelligent inspection of high-voltage equipment.