High performance and autonomous UAV for interactions with energized high voltage transmission lines

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DroneVolt Canada has recently launched a new drone product. This drone, the LineDrone, developed by Hydro-Québec, can land on high-voltage transmission lines to carry out various high-value direct contact non-destructive inspections without interruption of service. This drone is currently piloted manually, as several sensors are affected by the strong electromagnetic field. This poses a number of challenges in tight spaces near expensive/critical equipment. Manual operations force the pilot to stay immediately below the drone for landing alignment and obstacle avoidance. This complicates the deployment of the drone, lengthens operations and prevents its use in particularly useful situations (e.g., over rivers). Finally, due to its particular configuration, this drone can hardly operate in wind conditions above 20 km/h. All these constraints make for stressful or too often impossible operations, even for experienced pilots. The overall objective of this project is therefore to allow a drone to navigate and land autonomously on energized power lines in a wide range of environmental conditions. These capabilities would allow DroneVolt to offer utility companies a unique product which, while being easy to use and deploy, would allow them to safely perform valuable inspections. As part of this project, DroneVolt, Hydro-Québec and the Université de Sherbrooke (4 prof., 2 RA, 1 postdoc and 9 grad. students) will pool their respective expertise in dronautics, high-voltage power lines and robotics to improve the performance of this drone while developing the technologies necessary for autonomous operations around high-voltage transmission lines. This project represents a unique opportunity for DroneVolt and Hydro-Québec to respond to a pressing need. As in most countries, the electricity networks are aging rapidly. The associated restoration programs are complex and expensive, while planning for these operations is made difficult by the lack of quality data. This drone can sense directly the remaining useful life of energized conductors for better asset management, which lead to substantial savings and reduction of service interruptions.