Can a UAV be used to inspect a photovoltaic plant?

For more information on the journal statistics, click here . Multiple requests from the same IP address are counted as one view. Because photovoltaic (PV) plants require periodic maintenance, using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for inspections can help reduce costs. Usually, the thermal and visual inspection of PV installations works as follows.

Can an autonomous UAV track a PV module without a GPS?

The article proposes a novel approach using an autonomous UAV with an RGB and a thermal camera for PV module tracking through segmentation and visual servoing, which does not require a GPS except for measuring the “small” relative displacement between a PV module row and the next one.

Can uav photogrammetry be used for Autonomous inspection of PV plants?

The autonomous inspection of PV plants through UAV photogrammetry has been explored in the literature [ 14, 15, 29, 30 ]. The UAV is given a set of waypoints, usually arranged in such a way as to cover a delimited area to ensure the required horizontal and vertical overlapping of images.

Why does navigation error increase when a UAV starts tracking a PV module?

The figure shows that the navigation error tends to be larger when the UAV starts to track the PV module row after reaching PV start, the green vertical line. This is coherent with the fact that PV start is considered to be reached when the UAV position is within a 1 m distance, thus producing an initial error that is recovered later.

Can a street be used for UAV Navigation & path tracking?

The approach recently proposed in [ 42] relies on the availability of well-described streets in urban environments for UAV navigation and path tracking: while the drone position is continuously computed using visual odometry, scene matching is used to correct the position drift.

What are thermal drone applications on solar panels?

Thermal drone applications on solar panels (PV panels) make it possible to detect potential malfunctions and performance issues by mapping the thermal properties of the panels. Cell Failures: Solar panels convert solar energy into electricity through the cells they contain. Failures in the cells can reduce efficiency.