A Measurement Technology of Space Distance among Transmission Bundle Conductors Based on Image Sensors

The vibration between the spacers of bundle conductors may cause the conductors to collide with each other, thereby damaging the conductors and the spacers, even resulting in adhesion. The main function of the spacers is to limit the relative movement between the bundle conductors, but it still exists. In order to find out the potential dangers caused by the movement and prevent adhesion among four or multibundle conductors, a measurement method of space distance among bundle conductors is presented in this paper. First, the images of bundle conductors are obtained by installing cameras on the optimum position of tower, which are segmented by the maximum interclass variance method after preprocess, and the axis of conductors can be obtained by the skeleton extraction. Second, the image coordinates of each point on the axis are transformed into the world coordinates by camera calibration, and these points are fit by least-squares method to get the conductor function. Then, the actual transmission conductor model can be reconstructed according to the fitting function, conductor diameter, and spacers. Finally, calculating the distance between two bundle conductors, the minimum distance can be obtained. We analyze the performance of the technology by a series of experiments; the results demonstrate that the proposed method can measure the space distance with an average relative error of 2%-4%. The running status of the bundle conductors can be monitored based on the presented method in this paper, by which the safe operation of transmission lines can be guaranteed.