Two-Layer Routing for High-Voltage Powerline Inspection by Cooperated Ground Vehicle and Drone

Yao Liu, Jianmai Shi, Zhong Liu, Jincai Huang and Tianren Zhou
Additional contact information
Yao Liu: Science and Technology on Information Systems Engineering Laboratory, College of System Engineering, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China
Jianmai Shi: Science and Technology on Information Systems Engineering Laboratory, College of System Engineering, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China
Zhong Liu: Science and Technology on Information Systems Engineering Laboratory, College of System Engineering, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China
Jincai Huang: Science and Technology on Information Systems Engineering Laboratory, College of System Engineering, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China
Tianren Zhou: Science and Technology on Information Systems Engineering Laboratory, College of System Engineering, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 7, 1-20

Abstract: A novel high-voltage powerline inspection system was investigated, which consists of the cooperated ground vehicle and drone. The ground vehicle acts as a mobile platform that can launch and recycle the drone, while the drone can fly over the powerline for inspection within limited endurance. This inspection system enables the drone to inspect powerline networks in a very large area. Both vehicle’ route in the road network and drone’s routes along the powerline network have to be optimized for improving the inspection efficiency, which generates a new Two-Layer Point-Arc Routing Problem (2L-PA-RP). Two constructive heuristics were designed based on “Cluster First, Route Second” and “Route First, Split Second”. Then, local search strategies were developed to further improve the quality of the solution. To test the performance of the proposed algorithms, different-scale practical cases were designed based on the road network and powerline network of Ji’an, China. Sensitivity analysis on the parameters related to the drone’s inspection speed and battery capacity was conducted. Computational results indicate that technical improvement on the inspection sensor is more important for the cooperated ground vehicle and drone system.

Keywords: high-voltage powerline inspection; vehicle routing; arc routing; drone; heuristic (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/7/1385/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/7/1385/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:12:y:2019:i:7:p:1385-:d:221560

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().