Extraction of power lines from mobile laser scanning data

Modern urban life is becoming increasingly more dependent on reliable electric power supply. Since power outages cause substantial financial losses to producers, distributors and consumers of electric power, it is in the common interest to minimize failures of power lines. In order to detect defects as early as possible and to plan efficiently the maintenance activities, distribution networks are regularly inspected. Carrying out foot patrols or climbing the structures to visually inspect transmission lines and aerial surveys (e.g., digital imaging or most recent airborne laser scanning (ALS) are the two most commonly used methods of power line inspection. Although much faster in comparison to the foot patrol inspection, aerial inspection is more expensive and usually less accurate, in complex urban areas particularly. This paper presents a scientific work that is done in the use of mobile laser scanning (MLS) point clouds for automated extraction of power lines. In the proposed method, 2D power lines are extracted using Hough transform in the projected XOY plane and the 3D power line points are visualized after the point searching. Filtering based on an elevation threshold is applied, which is combined with the vehicle’s trajectory in the horizontal section.