{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,9]],"date-time":"2026-07-09T18:39:40Z","timestamp":1783622380173,"version":"3.55.0"},"reference-count":19,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2017,1,12]],"date-time":"2017-01-12T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1484179200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["41371432"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["41371432"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["IJGI"],"abstract":"<jats:p>When the distance between an obstacle and a power line is less than the discharge distance, a discharge arc can be generated, resulting in the interruption of power supplies. Therefore, regular safety inspections are necessary to ensure the safe operation of power grids. Tall vegetation and buildings are the key factors threatening the safe operation of extra high voltage transmission lines within a power line corridor. Manual or laser intensity direction and ranging (LiDAR) based inspections are time consuming and expensive. To make safety inspections more efficient and flexible, a low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) remote-sensing platform, equipped with an optical digital camera, was used to inspect power line corridors. We propose a semi-patch matching algorithm based on epipolar constraints, using both the correlation coefficient (CC) and the shape of its curve to extract three dimensional (3D) point clouds for a power line corridor. We use a stereo image pair from inter-strip to improve power line measurement accuracy by transforming the power line direction to an approximately perpendicular to epipolar line. The distance between the power lines and the 3D point cloud is taken as a criterion for locating obstacles within the power line corridor automatically. Experimental results show that our proposed method is a reliable, cost effective, and applicable way for practical power line inspection and can locate obstacles within the power line corridor with accuracy better than \u00b10.5 m.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/ijgi6010014","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2017,1,12]],"date-time":"2017-01-12T10:02:08Z","timestamp":1484215328000},"page":"14","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":79,"title":["UAV Low Altitude Photogrammetry for Power Line Inspection"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"6","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0230-1395","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Yong","family":"Zhang","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Remote Sensing and Information Engineering, Wuhan University, 129 Luoyu Road, Wuhan 430079, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Xiuxiao","family":"Yuan","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Remote Sensing and Information Engineering, Wuhan University, 129 Luoyu Road, Wuhan 430079, China"},{"name":"Collaborative Innovation Center of Geospatial Technology, Wuhan 430079, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yi","family":"Fang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Remote Sensing and Information Engineering, Wuhan University, 129 Luoyu Road, Wuhan 430079, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Shiyu","family":"Chen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Remote Sensing and Information Engineering, Wuhan University, 129 Luoyu Road, Wuhan 430079, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2017,1,12]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"Mu, C. (2010). Research on Extraction Method of Power Line Corridor Feature Based on Multi Remote Sensing Data. [Ph.D. Dissertation, Wuhan University]."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"235","DOI":"10.5194\/isprsarchives-XL-1-W2-235-2013","article-title":"Light-weight sensor package for precision 3D measurement with micro UAVs E.G. power-line monitoring","volume":"XL-1\/W2","author":"Kuhnert","year":"2013","journal-title":"Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spat. Inf. Sci."},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"339","DOI":"10.1016\/j.epsr.2012.07.015","article-title":"Vegetation encroachment monitoring for transmission lines right-of-ways: A survey","volume":"95","author":"Ahmad","year":"2013","journal-title":"Electr. Power Syst. Res."},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1357","DOI":"10.1016\/j.pnsc.2009.02.006","article-title":"Mission planning of the flying robot for powerline inspection","volume":"19","author":"Chang","year":"2009","journal-title":"Prog. Nat. Sci."},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"5","DOI":"10.1139\/juvs-2013-0012","article-title":"A low cost way for assessing bird risk hazards in power lines: Fixed-wing small unmanned aircraft systems","volume":"2","author":"Negro","year":"2014","journal-title":"J. Unmanned Veh. Syst."},{"key":"ref_6","first-page":"94060J:1","article-title":"Visual based navigation for power line inspection by using virtual environments","volume":"9406","author":"Prieto","year":"2015","journal-title":"Proc. SPIE"},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"04014194","DOI":"10.1061\/(ASCE)CF.1943-5509.0000702","article-title":"UAV potogrammetry monitoring application to the monitoring of rubble mound breakwaters","volume":"30","author":"Puente","year":"2016","journal-title":"J. Perform. Constr. Facil."},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Miralles, F., Pouliot, N., and Montambault, S. (2014, January 14\u201316). State-of-the-art review of computer vision for the management of power transmission lines. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Applied Robotics for the Power Industry (CARPI), Foz do Iguassu, Brazil.","DOI":"10.1109\/CARPI.2014.7030068"},{"key":"ref_9","unstructured":"Hirschm\u00fcller, H. (2005, January 20\u201325). Accurate and efficient stereo processing by semi-global matching and mutual information. Proceedings of the IEEE Computer Society Conference on CVPR, San Diego, CA, USA."},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1362","DOI":"10.1109\/TPAMI.2009.161","article-title":"Accurate, dense, and robust multiview stereopsis","volume":"32","author":"Yasutaka","year":"2010","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell."},{"key":"ref_11","unstructured":"Bleyer, M., Rhemann, C., and Rother, C. (September, January 29). Patchmatch stereo\u2014Stereo matching with slanted support windows. Proceedings of the British Machine Vision Conference, Dundee, UK."},{"key":"ref_12","first-page":"704","article-title":"Realtime ranging of power transmission line","volume":"36","author":"Zheng","year":"2011","journal-title":"Geomat. Inf. Sci. Wuhan Univ."},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"953","DOI":"10.1016\/j.pnsc.2008.02.005","article-title":"A novel method of systematic error compensation for a position and orientation system","volume":"18","author":"Yuan","year":"2008","journal-title":"Prog. Nat. Sci."},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"21","DOI":"10.1016\/S0925-7721(01)00047-5","article-title":"Delaunay refinement algorithms for triangular mesh generation","volume":"22","author":"Shewchuk","year":"2002","journal-title":"Comput. Geom."},{"key":"ref_15","unstructured":"Gribbon, K.T., and Bailey, D.G. (2004, January 28\u201330). A novel approach to real-time bilinear interpolation. Proceedings of the Delta IEEE International Workshop on Electronic Design, Test and Applications, Perth, Australia."},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"167","DOI":"10.1023\/B:VISI.0000022288.19776.77","article-title":"Efficient graph-based image segmentation","volume":"2","author":"Felzenszwalb","year":"2004","journal-title":"Int. J. Comput. Vis."},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"381","DOI":"10.1145\/358669.358692","article-title":"Random Sample Consensus: A paradigm for model fitting with application to image analysis and automated cartography","volume":"24","author":"Fischler","year":"1981","journal-title":"Commun. ACM"},{"key":"ref_18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"64","DOI":"10.1080\/00050351.1999.10558774","article-title":"The influence of the number of satellites on the accuracy of RTK GPS positions","volume":"44","author":"Lemmon","year":"1999","journal-title":"Aust. Surviv."},{"key":"ref_19","unstructured":"Zhang, Z.X., and Zhang, J.Q. (1997). Digital Photogrammetry, Wuhan University Press."}],"container-title":["ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2220-9964\/6\/1\/14\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T18:26:03Z","timestamp":1760207163000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2220-9964\/6\/1\/14"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2017,1,12]]},"references-count":19,"journal-issue":{"issue":"1","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2017,1]]}},"alternative-id":["ijgi6010014"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/ijgi6010014","relation":{},"ISSN":["2220-9964"],"issn-type":[{"value":"2220-9964","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2017,1,12]]}}}