Automatic condition monitoring method to find defects in high-voltage insulators using infrared images

Abstract

In recent years, infrared imaging has become an important tool, particularly for predicting and preventing electrical equipment failure. Systems for online monitoring of the equipment conditions used in electrical substations are based on computer vision algorithms to perform visual analysis, automatically detect and assess equipment condition. This article describes a developed method that automatically finds defects in high-voltage insulators using infrared images. This method is based on the Otsu method, which is one of the most popular and effective segmentation methods that can be applied to finding defects in infrared images. The result is a comparative analysis of computer vision methods in infrared images used in our research. Automatic condition monitoring to find defects in high-voltage insulators in infrared images can be considered as the base method for an automated thermal imaging system for monitoring electrical substation equipment.