A vision based high tension line detection system

This paper focuses on obstacle detection during low height flight tasks. Flight obstacles such as high tension lines are difficult to detect using radar or laser sensors, because they don't have enough reflection area. To resolve this problem, a vision based detection method is proposed in this paper. The proposed method detects both high tension lines and line pylons within the pictures captured from the front-view of the aircraft by long focus cameras. A detection system based on the proposed method is also built in this paper. The test results prove that the performance of the system is satisfying enough for a real application.