IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 68, NO.
10, OCTOBER 2019
A Measurement Technology of Space Distance
Among Transmission Bundle Conductors
Based on Image Sensors
Xinbo Huang ( ) , Senior Member, IEEE, Luya Yang (
Yongcan Zhu ( ), and Guanjun Zhang (
Abstract— The vibration between the spacers of bundle con-
ductors may cause the conductors to collide with each other,
thereby damaging the conductors and the spacers, even resulting
in adhesion. The main function of the spacers is to limit the
relative movement between the bundle conductors, but it still
exists. In order to find out the potential dangers caused by the
movement and prevent adhesion among four or multibundle
conductors, a measurement method of space distance among
bundle conductors is presented in this paper. First, the images
of bundle conductors are obtained by installing cameras on the
optimum position of tower, which are segmented by the maximum
interclass variance method after preprocess, and the axis of
conductors can be obtained by the skeleton extraction. Second,
the image coordinates of each point on the axis are transformed
into the world coordinates by camera calibration, and these
points are fit by least-squares method to get the conductor
function. Then, the actual transmission conductor model can
be reconstructed according to the fitting function, conductor
diameter, and spacers. Finally, calculating the distance between
two bundle conductors, the minimum distance can be obtained.
We analyze the performance of the technology by a series of
experiments; the results demonstrate that the proposed method
can measure the space distance with an average relative error
of 2%–4%. The running status of the bundle conductors can be
monitored based on the presented method in this paper, by which
the safe operation of transmission lines can be guaranteed.
Index Terms— Bundle conductors, camera calibration, image
processing, space distance, transmission lines.
I. I NTRODUCTION
I N RECENT years, the adhesion between bundle conductors
is becoming more and more serious with the development
of ultra-high-voltage (UHV) transmission lines in China [1].
Manuscript received July 25, 2018; revised September 25, 2018; accepted
November 14, 2018. Date of publication December 21, 2018; date of current
version September 13, 2019. This work was supported in part by the Shaanxi
Industrial Science and Technology Tackling Key Problems Fund under Grant
2016GY-052 and in part by the Project of Science and Technology Research
of Shaanxi under Grant 2018JQ5049 and Grant 2018ZDXM-GY-040. The
Associate Editor coordinating the review process was Domenico Grimaldi.
(Corresponding author: Xinbo Huang.)
X. Huang, L. Yang, and Y. Zhu are with the School of Electronics and
Information, Xi’an Polytechnic University, Xi’an 710048, China (e-mail:
huangxb1975@163.com; 767042645@qq.com; 286844943@qq.com).
Y. Zhang is with the School of Electro-Mechanical Engineering, Xidian
University, Xi’an 710071, China (e-mail: 286523007@qq.com).
G. Zhang is with the School of Electrical Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong
University, Xi’an 710049, China (e-mail: gjzhang@mail.xjtu.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this article are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIM.2018.2885265
0018-9456 © 2018 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
Authorized licensed use limited to: Carmen Cornejo. Downloaded on January 11,2022 at 15:49:37 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
4003
), Ye Zhang ( ),
), Member, IEEE
The currents through the in-phase four or more bundle conduc-
tors in operation have the same direction and the electromag-
netic force between them is attractive, but the electromagnetic
force among them is relatively small in normal condition. But
under the strong wind, the four or more bundle conductors [2]
have a nonsynchronous galloping with small amplitude due
to inconsistent stress [3]; the space distance will be very
close instantly. The electromagnetic force among the bundle
conductors becomes large with the increase of current [4];
the adhesion phenomenon of bundle conductors will occur
when the electromagnetic force among the conductor is greater
than the deadweight. When the adhesion of bundle conductors
occurs, on the one hand, corona discharge is prone to occur,
which can cause an increase in line loss and an interference
with accessory communications facilities. On the other hand,
the whipping phenomenon of conductors is prominent [5],
which not only increases the line loss but also may cause
the conductor break accident. These will seriously affect the
safe operation of transmission lines.
At present, some researchers have analyzed the adhesion
mechanism between transmission bundle conductors and put
forward some preventive measures [6]–[8], such as reducing
the height of the lower bundle conductor or increasing the
height of the upper bundle conductor, replacing or extending
the fittings, and using the same batch of products. These
methods are preventive only on the previous installation, and
the adhesion problem of the bundle conductors is mainly
observed by manual detection which is time-consuming and
poorly secure.
Currently, the vision-based technology has been widely used
in a variety of automated applications. The measurement based
on vision can be used to measure the lay length of metallic
conductor [9], inspect the discrete surface defects on rail
heads [10], and accurately detect the complex pharmaceutical
pill shapes [11]. However, there is no intelligent method
based on vision to timely monitor the adhesion among the
bundle conductors. This paper presents a measurement method
of space distance among bundle conductors based on image
sensors [12], which can obtain the space distance among
in-phase bundle conductors in operation by using image
processing and reconstructing conductors. The adhesion loca-
tion of conductors can be automatically calculated, and the
alarm will be raised once the space distance among conductors
4004 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 68, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2019
Fig. 1. Flowchart of the measurement technology of space distance among
transmission bundle conductors based on image sensors.
cannot meet the requirements of the regulation. The presented
method provides a new method for monitoring the adhesion
of transmission bundle conductors in operation.
The flowchart of the measurement technology is shown in
Fig.1. This paper is organized as follows. Section II describes
the overview of a measurement technology of space distance
among transmission bundle conductors based on image sen-
sors. Section III completes the calculation of space distance
among bundle conductors. Section IV proposes the analysis
algorithms of conductor distance monitoring. Section V gives
the experimental results and analysis. Section VI illustrates
the field running tests. Finally, Section VII provides the
conclusion.
II. OVERVIEW OF A M EASUREMENT T ECHNOLOGY OF
S PACE D ISTANCE A MONG T RANSMISSION B UNDLE
C ONDUCTORS BASED ON I MAGE S ENSORS
The proposed measurement technology of space distance
among transmission bundle conductors based on image sensors
consists of three parts: the monitoring device with image
sensors, the GPRS communication networks [13], and the
monitoring center with the conductor distance analysis soft-
ware. The conductor images are captured by image sensors,
decompressed, and sent to the monitoring center by GPRS
communication networks. Then, the conductor distance is
analyzed by the proposed distance calculation algorithm. The
block diagram of the proposed online monitoring system
for the conductor distance is illustrated in Fig. 2, which
can realize the 24-h online monitoring of UHV transmission
lines [14], [15].
A. Online Measuring Device
The online measuring device is comprised of a main control
unit (MCU), video acquisition modules, and a power supply
module [16]. The MCU, which consists of Acorn reduced
Authorized licensed use limited to: Carmen Cornejo. Downloaded on January 11,2022 at 15:49:37 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
Fig. 2. Block diagram of the online monitoring system.
instruction set computer machine and DSP, communicates with
the video acquisition module through the session initiation
protocol. Because the focus of this paper is to monitor the
distance between transmission bundle conductors, therefore,
the online monitoring device with cameras is installed in the
specific positions on the tower to monitor different angles of
UHV transmission lines in order to get the proper shooting
angle images.
B. Monitoring Center
The monitoring center consists of the conductor distance
analysis software, the database, and the computer. The con-
ductor distance analysis software is developed by combining
VC++ [17] and HALCON [18], which involves the key
technologies such as the network communication, the video
transmission, video coding, and decoding and the conduc-
tor distance analysis algorithms. The main functions consist
of file operation, real-time image importing, algorithm and
analysis, image display, and defect information display. The
conductor distance analysis algorithms will be presented in
Sections III and IV, by which the conductor distance will be
obtained.
III. C ALCULATION OF S PACE D ISTANCE A MONG
T RANSMISSION B UNDLE C ONDUCTORS
A. Image Processing
The specific processing algorithm is shown in Fig. 3.
The camera parameters can be get by the calibration board
images [see Fig. 3(a)]. The acquired images of conductors
[see Fig. 3(b)] are processed by the grayscale and the Gaussian
filter [see Fig. 3(c)]. Then, the conductor areas are extracted
[see Fig. 3(d)], and the axis of the conductor is obtained by
the skeleton extraction [see Fig. 3(e)]. The image coordinates
of each point on the axis are transformed into the world
coordinates by the camera calibration [see Fig. 3(f)], and the
axis functions are obtained by fitting these points with least-
squares method (LSM) [see Fig. 3(g)].
B. Application of Space Distance
According to the fitting functions obtained by Section III-A,
the conductor diameter, and the spacer, the actual conductor
HUANG et al.: MEASUREMENT TECHNOLOGY OF SPACE DISTANCE AMONG TRANSMISSION BUNDLE CONDUCTORS 4005

and its corresponding point in the image, the geometric

model of camera imaging must be established and the process
of determining its parameters is called the camera calibra-
tion [20]–[22]. For two parallel bundle conductors, since the
distance between the conductors in the left part of the images
is the largest and the right part of the images is the smallest and
even may be 0, the actual distance between the lines cannot
be obtained directly from the images. Then, transferring the
image coordinates to the world coordinates can be achieved
by camera calibration. The calibration parameters are related
to the camera type and model, so different cameras need
to be calibrated separately and the obtained results can be
directly used in the experiment. By constructing the actual
conductor [23], the distance between the bundle conductors
can be calculated.
The principle of camera calibration is as follows: assume
that the plane of the calibration board is located on the
plane of Z = 0 in the world coordinate system, the world
coordinate of the characteristic point on the calibration board
is A(x w , yw , 0), and the corresponding image coordinate
is a(u w , v w ); the following formula can be obtained:
⎡ ⎤ ⎡ ⎤
Fig. 3. Processing algorithms. (a) Camera calibration. (b) Acquired image.
uw xw
(c) Processed image. (d) Conductor areas. (e) Conductor axis. (f) World ϕ ⎣ v w ⎦ = M[r1 r2 T ] ⎣ yw ⎦ (1)
coordinates of conductors. (g) Fit results. 1 1
where ϕ is the depth factor, M is the internal parameter of the
camera, r1 , r2 are the rotation vectors, T is the translation
vector, and the homography matrix H = M[r1 r2 T ] is
the rotation and translation vectors of the world coordinate
system versus the image coordinates system. The homography
matrix H can be obtained by solving the equation. Define
a matrix E = M -T M −1 , and the following formula can be
obtained:
⎧ √
⎪
⎪ qx = μ/E 11
⎪
⎪

⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ q y = μE 11 E 11 E 22 − E 12 2
⎪
⎨ 
u 0 = γ v 0 /qx − E 13 qx2 μ
⎪  (2)
⎪
⎪ v 0 = (E 12 E 13 − E 11 E 23 ) E 11 E 22 − E 2
⎪
⎪  12
⎪
⎪ γ = −E 12 qx2 q y μ
⎪
⎩μ = E −  E 2 + v (E E − E E ) E .
⎪
33 13 0 12 13 11 23 11
Fig. 4. Flowchart of the measuring technology for the conductor distance. The internal parameter of the camera
⎡ ⎤
model can be constructed. Then, calculate the distance [19] qx 0 u 0
di between the bundle conductors to obtain the minimum M = ⎣ 0 q y v0 ⎦
distance dmin , when dmin somewhere is less than the require- 0 0 1
ments of the regulation. The relative location S can also be
can be obtained by solving the equation.
calculated, and the detailed alarm will be issued timely. The
According to the obtained homography matrix H and the
management persons will find the conductor adhesion area
internal parameter M, the external parameter of the camera O
timely and take appropriate measures to fix it. The flowchart of
can be obtained
the measuring technology for the conductor distance is shown ⎧
in Fig. 4. ⎪
⎪ r1 = μM −1 h 1
⎪
⎨r = μM −1 h
IV. A NALYSIS A LGORITHMS OF C ONDUCTOR 2 2
(3)
⎪
⎪ r = r × r
D ISTANCE M ONITORING ⎪
⎩
3 1 2

A. Camera Calibration T = μM −1 h 3
In the image process, in order to determine the relationship where r1 , r2 , r3 are the rotation vectors and T is the translation
between the position of a point on the surface of an object vector.

Authorized licensed use limited to: Carmen Cornejo. Downloaded on January 11,2022 at 15:49:37 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
4006 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 68, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2019

TABLE I
C ALCULATION OF C ALIBRATION E RROR

Camera calibration can be achieved by using images with

calibration boards; the calibration board used in this paper is
30 mm × 30 mm. It contains 7 × 7 circular marks, and the
central point of each circular mark is the mark point. The
inner frame is 28.125 mm × 28.125 mm, the circular radius
is 0.9375 mm, and the circular center distance is 3.75 mm.
In the camera calibration, the calibration board should occupy
2/3 of the image, so the distance between the camera and the
calibration board is approximately 1 m.
The more the calibration board images, the higher is the
accuracy of the camera parameters. The 12 images of the
calibration board with different angles are selected for calibra-
tion in this paper. The specific calibration process is as fol-
lows: First, the internal parameter of the camera is initialized
Fig. 5. Comparison of calibrated values with actual values.
according to the lens specification, and the world coordinates
of the mark points are obtained from the calibration board which fully shows that the calibration parameters obtained
description file. Then, 12 calibration board images are read are accurate and the image coordinates of the points can be
in turn to find the image coordinates of the mark points converted into world coordinates accurately.
and the initial external parameters. Finally, the final internal
and external parameters are obtained according to the initial
internal parameter, the world coordinates of the mark points, B. Extraction of the Conductors
image coordinates of the mark points, and the initial outer 1) Conductor Image Preprocessing: The calibrated camera
parameters in 12 images, which are the camera parameters M is installed in the specific position of the tower to capture the
and O. field images, which can move and rotate to adjust the shooting
After the calibration, in order to verify the accuracy of angle and distance. Due to the complex field environment
the calibration results, an image of the calibration board is such as illumination changing and background, the captured
selected as an example in this paper. The image coordinates images are difficult to process. In order to extract the conductor
of 10 mark points can be converted into the world coordinates from the images, it is necessary to select a proper image
by M and O; then, the error can be calculated. The results of enhancement algorithm to improve the image quality.
the actual and calibrated coordinates of 10 points are shown The principle of multiscale Retinex (MSR) with color
in Table I; the minimum error is 0 and the maximum error is restoration (MSRCR) is as follows: the color images are
5.0 × 10−8 which is represented by the square of the distance decomposed into three channels
between the actual coordinates and the calibrated coordinates.
Y = Rr + Gg + Bb (4)
The comparison between the actual coordinates and the cali-
brated coordinates is shown in Fig. 5; the calibration values of where Y represents a specific color, R, G, and B represent
the marked points are basically the same as the actual values, three primary colors of red, green, and blue, and r , g, and

Authorized licensed use limited to: Carmen Cornejo. Downloaded on January 11,2022 at 15:49:37 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
HUANG et al.: MEASUREMENT TECHNOLOGY OF SPACE DISTANCE AMONG TRANSMISSION BUNDLE CONDUCTORS 4007

TABLE II
P ROCESSING T IME OF D IFFERENT I MAGE E NHANCEMENT M ETHODS

b represent the proportional coefficients of the three primary
colors.
The color restoration factor of i th channel is
  3
 In order to improve the accuracy and efficiency, x 1 and x 2
ci (x, y) = log Ci (x, y) = log Si (x, y) Si (x, y) (5)
i=1
where Ci (x,y) represents the integer domain color restoration
coefficient of i th channel, Si (x,y) represents the input image
of i th channel, and there are three channels in the RGB image
of this paper.
boundary point, y1 and y2 represent the ordinate of the
boundary point, and range represents the maximum range of
gray values.
in (8) can be obtained automatically [25]. The 2-D minimum
error method is used twice to obtain x 1 and x 2 in this paper
J (s, t)
= 1 − P0 (s, t) ln P0 (s, t) − P1 (s, t) ln P1 (s, t)
+ P0 (s, t) ln δ00 (s, t)δ01 (s, t) + P1 (s, t) ln δ10 (s, t)δ11 (s, t)

The reflection component of i th channel is + P0 (s, t) ln 1 − ρ02 (s, t) + P1 (s, t) ln 1 − ρ12 (s, t) (9)
ri (x, y) = log Ri (x, y)
where δ00 (s,t), δ01 (s,t), δ10 (s,t), and δ11 (s,t) represent the
K 3
normal P0 (s, t) =
= Wk {log Si (x, y)−log[Fk (x, y) ∗ Si (x, y)]} s distribution
t
variance, priori probability
L−1  L−1
k=1 i=1 i=0 j =0 Pi j , P1 (s, t) = i=s+1 j =t +1 Pi j , L repre-
(6) sents the number of gray levels, and Pi j represents the fre-
quency of (i, j ). ρ0 (s, t) and ρ1 (s, t) represent the correlation
where Ri (x,y) represents the integer domain of i th channel, coefficient. The best threshold is obtained when J (s, t) at the
K represents the number of scales, Wk represents the weight of minimum value
k scale, Fk (x,y) represents the Gaussian convolution template
of k scale, and ∗ represents a convolution. (s ∗ , t ∗ ) = arg min J (s, t). (10)
0<s,t <L−1
Then, the output image with color restoration coefficient of
i th channel can be obtained The first calculation can obtain the boundary point x 2
of the target and the transition, and the second can obtain
Ri Ci (x, y) = exp(ri (x, y) + ci (x, y)). (7)
the boundary point x 1 (x 1 < x 2 ) of the transition and the
However, the traditional MSRCR algorithm [24] has the background. After getting the enhancement images of R, G,
shortcomings of low contrast, darkness, and poor accuracy. and B channels, the enhancement image processed by the
So, an improved MSRCR image enhancement algorithm is improved MSRCR algorithm can be obtained by composing
proposed in this paper, which adds an adaptive piecewise linear the three channels.
transformation after the Ri Ci (x, y) is obtained. The formula The comparison of this method and other methods is shown
of the piecewise linear transformation is as follows: in Tables II and III. The color saturation and contrast of the
⎧ improved MSRCR algorithm are higher, the target is clearer,
⎪ y1 g(i, j )
⎪
⎪ , g(i, j ) < x 1 and the robustness is better. The adaptive histogram equal-
⎪
⎪
⎨ (y x−1 y )[g(i, j ) − x ] ization method and the dark channel method take less time,
g  (i, j ) =
2 1 1
+ y1 , x 1 < g(i, j ) < x 2 but the color distortion occurs and the effect is not good. The
⎪
⎪ x − x
⎪
⎪
2 1
(range − y2 )[g(i, j ) − x 2 ] MSR algorithm is better than the adaptive histogram equaliza-
⎪
⎩ + y2 , g(i, j ) > x 2 tion method and the dark channel method, but it takes a long
range − x 2
(8) time and has color saturation. In contrast, the proposed method
in this paper has the advantages of high color saturation,
where g  (i, j ) represents the output value, g(i, j ) represents brightness, and contrast. It also takes into account the real
the input value, x 1 and x 2 represent the abscissa of the time at the same time, which has certain advantages.

Authorized licensed use limited to: Carmen Cornejo. Downloaded on January 11,2022 at 15:49:37 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
4008 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 68, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2019

TABLE III
C OMPARISON OF D IFFERENT I MAGE E NHANCEMENT M ETHODS

2) Conductor Extraction: The images are segmented by In this paper, the maximum interclass variance method is
the maximum interclass variance method (OTSU) [26]. The used to segment the H component and the S component,
principle is as follows: there are L grayscale levels in the respectively, and the obtained intersection H ∩ S can reduce
gray image; the pixels are divided into two categories C0 the background and noise interference. Assuming that the
and C1 by using a grayscale threshold s. C0 indicates the segmentation result of the H component is H (i, j) and the
pixel points whose gray level is [1, 2, . . . , s] and C1 indicates S component is S(i, j), H ∩ S is defined as
the pixel points whose gray level is [s + 1, s + 2, . . . , L].
The probabilities of the occurrence of two categories are, H ∩ S = H (i, j ) && S(i, j ) 0 ≤ i ≤ W −1, 0 ≤ j ≤ Z −1
respectively, as follows:
⎧ (15)
⎪ s
⎪
⎪ ω = P(C ) = Pi = ω(s)
⎪
⎨ 0 0
where W is the width of the image and Z is the height of the
i=1
(11) image.
⎪
⎪  L
⎪
⎩ω1 = P(C1 ) = Pi = 1 − ω(s).
⎪ The segmentation of three images under different condi-
i=s+1 tions is shown in Table IV. The gray image segmentation
of Numbers 1 and 3 have some background noises, and
The average gray levels for both categories are
⎧ Number 2 is incomplete and still has some holes in the inside.
⎪
⎪  s  s
On the other hand, the H ∩ S segmentation effect of three
⎪
⎪ μ = i P(i |C ) = i Pi /ω0 = μ(s)/ω(s)
⎪
⎪
0 0 images are all ideal, which can effectively avoid the influence
⎪
⎨ i=1 i=1
of external factors.
 L L
(12)
⎪
⎪ μ = i P(i |C ) = i Pi /ω1 In this paper, the distance between two conductors is
⎪
⎪
1 1
⎪
⎪ represented by the distance between central axes; therefore,
⎪
⎩
i=s+1 i=s+1
the skeleton extraction needs to be done to get the single-pixel
= [μT − μ(s)]/[1 − ω(s)]
L wide axis of conductors [27], [28]. The principle of skeleton
where μT = i=1 i Pi is the average gray level of the whole extraction is to mark the pixels in the conductor region (target
image; the interclass variance is pixels) as 1, and the background pixels are marked 0. All the
target pixels in the images are operated with the following
σ 2 (s) = ω0 (μ0 − μT )2 + ω1 (μ1 − μT )2 = ω0 ω1 (μ1 − μ0 )2
3 × 3 region:
[μT ω(s) − μ(s)]2
= . (13)
ω(s)[1 − ω(s)]
The corresponding grayscale s ∗ is the segmentation thresh-
old when the interclass variance is maximum
σ 2 (s ∗ ) = max σ 2 (s). (14)
1≤s<L

Authorized licensed use limited to: Carmen Cornejo. Downloaded on January 11,2022 at 15:49:37 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
HUANG et al.: MEASUREMENT TECHNOLOGY OF SPACE DISTANCE AMONG TRANSMISSION BUNDLE CONDUCTORS 4009

TABLE IV TABLE VI
I MAGE S EGMENTATION L INEWIDTH

TABLE V
S KELETON E XTRACTION

On the plane of Z = 0
⎧ h 11 x + h 12 y + h 14
⎪
⎨u =
h 31 x + h 32 y + h 34 (17)
⎪ h x + h 22 y + h 24
The center point d1 is the pixel point to be detected, and the ⎩v = 21 .
eight points in the neighborhood are marked as d2d3 . . . d9, h 31 x + h 32 y + h 34
respectively. If d1 satisfies the follows at the same time: The form of the matrix is
1) 2 ≤ N(d1) ≤ 6, N(d1) is the number of the nonzero
adjacent points of d1; 2) S(d1) = 1, S(d1) is the number CP = b (18)
of changes of the values from 0 to 1 of these points on where
the order of d1d2d3 . . . d9; 3) d2d4d6 = 0 or S(d1) = 1;    
and 4) d4d6d8 = 0 or S(d1) = 1. Deleting it and iterating h 11 − uh 31 h 12 − uh 32 uh 34 − h 14
C= and b =
sequentially until all the pixel points do not satisfy the above- h 21 − vh 31 h 22 − vh 32 vh 34 − h 24
mentioned conditions; then the remaining points form the are constant matrix and P = [x, y]T is the world coordinate
skeleton of conductor region. The result of skeleton extraction of a point; it can be obtained by solving this nonhomogeneous
is shown in Table V; the rectangular region of the conductor equation.
is processed into an axis.
Consider two conductors in Fig. 6 as an example, the result
Table VI shows the linewidth of the segmentation and
of transformation from image coordinates to world coordinates
skeleton extraction of several conductor images. The minimum
is shown in Table VII; some points are omitted.
width of the conductor areas obtained by the segmentation
Then, the LSM [29] is used to fit
these points. The principle
is 13 pixels and the maximum 24 pixels. After the skeleton n
is to find the polynomial y = k=0 a k x k (n represents the
extraction, the linewidth is single pixel.
degree of the fitting polynomial). The sum of squared distances
3) Space Distance Monitoring: The specific method for
from polynomial to given point (x i , yi ) is the smallest
converting image coordinates on the conductor to world coor-
 n 2
dinates is: the image coordinate of a point on the conductor 
m−1  
m−1
2 k
is (u, v) and the corresponding world coordinate is (x, y, z). F= [y − yi ] == a k x i − yi = min. (19)
According to the camera calibration result H obtained in i=0 i=0 k=0
Section IV-A By the necessary conditions of finding the extreme of a
⎡ ⎤
⎡ ⎤ ⎡ ⎤ x multivariate function, a formula can be obtained
u h 11 h 12 h 13 h 14 ⎢ ⎥ m−1 
y⎥
z ⎣ v ⎦ = ⎣ h 21 h 22 h 23 h 24 ⎦ ⎢ ⎣ z ⎦. (16)  n  k+ j  j
m−1

1 h 31 h 32 h 33 h 34 xi ak = x i yi ( j = 0, 1, . . . , n). (20)
1 k=0 i=0 i=0

Authorized licensed use limited to: Carmen Cornejo. Downloaded on January 11,2022 at 15:49:37 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
4010 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 68, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2019

TABLE VII
C ONDUCTOR C OORDINATES C ONVERSION

TABLE VIII
C OMPARISON OF D IFFERENT F ITTING M ETHODS

Expressed as a matrix The coefficient matrix is a symmetric positive definite

⎡ ⎤ ⎡ ⎤ matrix, so there exists a unique solution ak (k = 0, 1, . . . , n)

m−1 
m−1 
m−1
⎢ m xi · · · x in ⎥ ⎢ yi ⎥ to the equation system. Therefore, the fitting functions of the
⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥
⎢ i=0 i=0 ⎥ ⎡ ⎤ ⎢ i=0 ⎥ conductor axis can be obtained.
⎢ m−1 ⎥ a0 ⎢ ⎥
⎢ 
m−1 
m−1
⎥ ⎢ 
m−1
⎥ As shown in Fig. 6, conductors numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4
⎢ xi xi · · ·
2 n+1 ⎥ ⎢
x i ⎥ ⎢ a1 ⎥ ⎢ ⎥ ⎢ x i yi ⎥
⎢ ⎥ as examples, several different fitting methods are compared in
⎢ i=0 ⎥ ⎢ .. ⎥ = ⎢ i=0 ⎥. Table VIII. Sum squared error (SSE) represents the variance,
⎢ . i=0
.. ..
i=0
.. ⎥ ⎣ . ⎦ ⎢ .. ⎥
⎢ . ⎥ ⎢ ⎥
⎢ . . . . ⎥ an ⎢ . ⎥ root mean squared error (RMSE) represents the standard devi-
⎢ m−1 ⎥ ⎢ ⎥
⎢ 
m−1 
m−1 ⎥ ⎢ m−1
 ⎥ ation, and R-square represents the coefficient of determination;
⎣ x in x in+1 · · · x i2n ⎦ ⎣ x in yi ⎦ the normal value is [0,1]. The closer the value is to 1, the better
i=0 i=0 i=0 i=0 the function model fits the data. It can be seen from Table VIII
(21) that the SSE and RMSE of the polynomial fitting are the

Authorized licensed use limited to: Carmen Cornejo. Downloaded on January 11,2022 at 15:49:37 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
HUANG et al.: MEASUREMENT TECHNOLOGY OF SPACE DISTANCE AMONG TRANSMISSION BUNDLE CONDUCTORS
Fig. 6. Acquired image.
Fig. 7. Schematic of space distance between bundle conductors.
smallest and the R-square is the largest, indicating that the
fitting effect is the best. Therefore, the polynomial fitting is
used in this paper.
The space distance between two bundle conductors is shown
in Fig. 7, where the dashed lines represent the conductors,
the solid lines represent the axis, (x i , yi ) represents the coor-
dinates of any point on the conductor y1 , and the vertical
distance di represents the distance between the conductors.
The conductor y2 = Ax + B; the distance di can be
calculated as follows:
|Ax i − yi + B|
di = √ i = 1, 2, 3, . . . (22)
A2 + 1
V. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS AND A NALYSIS
After the above image processing and coordinates trans-
formation, the world coordinate scatters of four conductors
in Fig. 6 are shown in Fig. 8. The fitting results and residuals
are shown in Fig. 9; the obtained fitting functions in Fig. 9(a),
(c), (e), and (g) are as follows:
y1 = 0.2965x + 0.8554
y2 = 0.2919x + 0.8050
y3 = 0.0864x 2 + 0.1696x + 0.5475
y4 = 0.1193x 2 + 0.1863x + 0.5245.
Formula (23) is the fitting function of conductor 1, (24) is
the fitting function of conductor 2, (25) is the fitting function
of conductor 3, and (26) is the fitting function of conductor 4.
What is more, it can be seen from Fig. 9(b), (d), (f), and (h)
that the residuals float slightly around 0 and the maximum
residual mode is 0.013212 m. The fitting results are accurate.
In this paper, the first point on the conductor is chosen as the
origin point; the minimum distance dmin can be obtained after
distance di between the two bundle conductors calculated.
When dmin somewhere is detected less than the requirement,
Authorized licensed use limited to: Carmen Cornejo. Downloaded on January 11,2022 at 15:49:37 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
4011
Fig. 8. World coordinates scatters. (a) Conductors 1 and 2. (b) Conductors 3
and 4.
TABLE IX
M INIMUM D ISTANCE B ETWEEN T WO C ONDUCTORS
the distance S will be calculated to locate the fault point
and an alarm will be raised then. Otherwise, the bundle
conductors operate normally. So, the managers can find the
incorrect sections of the conductor in time and take appropriate
measures to adjust it to eliminate the potential danger of
adhesion between bundle conductors.
VI. F IELD RUNNING T ESTS
A. Field Installation
As shown in Fig. 10, the monitoring device is installed on
the tower’s certain positions, which has already been applied
to many UHV transmission lines.
Fig. 11 shows that the conductor distance analysis software
is installed in the monitoring center, whose functions include
image reading, image segmentation, fitting world points, and
(23) distance monitoring, because the cameras must capture the
(24) images apart from the fittings and the dampers, in which
the bundle conductors do not overlap each other. Therefore,
(25) the installation positions of the device, the monitoring plat-
(26) form, and the local area networks should be set properly
according to the requirements.
B. Performance Analysis
The conductors are numbered, and the model is constructed
in Fig. 12. In order to show the constructed model, two
different angles Angle1 and Angle2 are selected. The mini-
mum distance dmin between two conductors can be calculated
separately, when dmin is less than 0.5 m, calculating the
distance S to locate the fault point and raise an alarm.
Otherwise, it works normally. The calculated results are shown
4012 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 68, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2019

Fig. 9. Fitting results and residuals. (a) Fitting result of conductor 1. (b) Fitting residual of conductor 1. (c) Fitting result of conductor 2. (d) Fitting residual
of conductor 2. (e) Fitting result of conductor 3. (f) Fitting residual of conductor 3. (g) Fitting result of conductor 4. (h) Fitting residual of conductor 4.

Fig. 10. Field installation of the technology. (a) Device installation.

(b) Captured image.

Fig. 11. Conductor distance analysis software interface. (a) Conductor

segmentation. (b) Distance monitoring of the bundle conductors.

Fig. 13. Relative error histogram of test images. (a) Simple condition.
(b) Complex condition.

is 3.824 m, and the staff will be alarmed to find the fault

Fig. 12. Conductor model construction. (a) Numbered image. (b) Angle 1.
(c) Angle 2.
in Table IX; all obtained dmin in Table IX are more than 0.5 m.
Similarly, the monitoring results of several test images are
shown in Table X, dmin between Conductor 2 and Conductor 3
of Image 2 is 0.457 m, which is less than 0.5 m, the distance S
section.
As shown in Table XI, several field images under different
conditions are analyzed and compared with the total station [6]
measurement results. The maximum relative error is 6.4%,
and the minimum is only 1.4%. In addition, this paper selects
100 field test images in simple background and 100 in complex
background for experimental analysis. As shown in Fig. 13,
the relative error is mostly in [2,4), and the average error in
simple condition is smaller than the complex condition.

Authorized licensed use limited to: Carmen Cornejo. Downloaded on January 11,2022 at 15:49:37 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
HUANG et al.: MEASUREMENT TECHNOLOGY OF SPACE DISTANCE AMONG TRANSMISSION BUNDLE CONDUCTORS
TABLE X
M ONITORING R ESULT
TABLE XI
C OMPARISON OF THE P ROPOSED M ETHOD AND T OTAL S TATION
VII. C ONCLUSION
A measurement technology of space distance among trans-
mission bundle conductors based on image sensors is proposed
in this paper, which can judge the current operating status of
conductors by monitoring the actual distance between them.
It can locate and find the faults caused by conductor movement
in time. In this proposed method, the conductor axis is
obtained by the skeleton extraction and the image coordinates
are transferred to the world coordinates by the camera calibra-
tion. The maximum error is only 5.0 × 10−8 . By constructing
the transmission conductor model, dmin between conductors
Authorized licensed use limited to: Carmen Cornejo. Downloaded on January 11,2022 at 15:49:37 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
4013
can be calculated. By comparing with the total station mea-
surement, the minimum relative error is 1.4% and the relative
error is most between 2% and 4%. Our future work will focus
on researching how the multibundle conductors influence the
measurement results of image sensors, simplifying the design
of monitoring device, and optimizing the conductor distance
analysis algorithms at the same time.
R EFERENCES
[1] Z. Q. Liu, F. Huo, Y. H. Wei, J. J. Ruan, and F. C. Huangfu, “Analysis on
subconductors conglutination phenomena of 220 kV transmission line,”
High Voltage Eng., vol. 32, no. 11, pp. 61–63, Nov. 2006.
[2] P. Borin and F. D. Freitas, “Influence of bundle conductors in UHV trans-
mission lines,” IEEE Latin Amer. Trans., vol. 14, no. 6, pp. 2732–2737,
Jun. 2016.
[3] X. Huang, L. Zhao, and G. M. Chen, “Design of a wireless sensor
module for monitoring conductor galloping of transmission lines,”
Sensors, vol. 16, no. 10, p. 1657, Oct. 2016.
[4] R. C. Xian, B. Yuan, L. K. Zhang, Y. H. Zhao, X. G. Liu, and G. S. Liu,
“The influence and detection analysis of 220 kV twin bundle adhesion,”
Shandong Dianli Jishu, vol. 41, no. 5, pp. 19–24, 2014.
[5] X. B. Liu, “Analysis and treatment of whipping phenomenon
of transmission line conductors,” Low Carbon World, no. 12, pp. 31–32,
Apr. 2017. [Online]. Available: http://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/Detail.aspx?
dbname=CJFDLAST2017&filename=DTSJ201712022
[6] R. Wang, R. L. Zhang, X. Y. Peng, H. M. Zhou, and X. D. Yang,
“Research on field test on reasons and influence factors for cong-
lutination of 220 kV vertically arranged double bundled conductor,”
Guangdong Elect. Power, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 106–111, Apr. 2015.
[7] W. Zhou et al., “Experimental investigation into the mechanism of
220-kV vertical-arrayed double-bundle transmission-line conglutina-
tion,” IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 1980–1985, Oct. 2013.
[8] J. Bao, “Case study and technical countermeasures of vertical-arrayed
double-bundled transmission-line conglutination for 220 kV overhead
transmission line,” Elect. Equip., vol. 9, pp. 76–78, May 2009.
[9] T. M. Kanakam et al., “Adaptable ring for vision-based measurements
and shape analysis,” IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas., vol. 66, no. 4,
pp. 746–756, Apr. 2017.
[10] Q. Li and S. Ren, “A real-time visual inspection system for discrete
surface defects of rail heads,” IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas., vol. 61,
no. 8, pp. 2189–2199, Aug. 2012.
4014 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 68, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2019

[11] A. Vallan and F. Molinari, “A vision-based technique for lay length Xinbo Huang (SM’16) was born in Shandong, China, in 1975. He received
measurement of metallic wire ropes,” IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas., the B.S. and M.S. degrees in automation from Qingdao Technological Uni-
vol. 58, no. 5, pp. 1756–1762, May 2009. versity, Qingdao, China, in 1998 and 2001, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree
[12] S.-H. Kim et al., “Reduction of fixed pattern noise in bolometer- in automation from Xidian University, Xi’an, China, in 2005.
type uncooled infrared image sensors using pixel current calibration He is currently a Professor with the School of Electronics Information,
technique,” in Proc. IEEE SENSORS, Oct./Nov. 2017, pp. 1–3. Xi’an Polytechnic University, Xi’an, and also a Ph.D. Supervisor with the
[13] H. Chen, “Application of GPRS communication technology School of Electro-Mechanical Engineering, Xidian University. His current
in distrib-ution network automation monitoring system,” research interests include online monitoring technology, the image recognition
Shandong Univ., Jinan, China, Apr. 2006. [Online]. Available: technology, and the wireless network sensor.
http://kns.cnki.net/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CMFD&dbname=
CMFD201401&filename=1014001385.nh&uid
[14] H. Y. Li, “Discussion on operation management and optimiza-
tion countermeasures of UHV transmission lines,” Technol.
Innov. Appl., no. 36, pp. 100-101, 2017. [Online]. Available:
http://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/Detail.aspx?dbname=CJFDLAST2018&
filename=CXYY201736061
[15] J. P. Wang and Z. L. Luo, “Operation and maintenance
Luya Yang was born in Shanxi, China, in 1993. She received the B.S. degree
management strategy of 500 kV UHV transmission lines,” Telecom.
in electronic information engineering from Xi’an Polytechnic University,
World, no. 14, pp. 247–248, Jul. 2017. [Online]. Available:
Xi’an, China, in 2016, where she is currently pursuing the master’s degree in
http://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/Detail.aspx?dbname=CJFDLAST2017&
signal and information processing.
filename=TXSJ201714176
Her current research interests include fault detection based on image
[16] X. B. Huang, F. Zhang, H. Li, and X. Liu, “An online technology for
processing.
measuring icing shape on conductor based on vision and force sensors,”
IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas., vol. 66, no. 12, pp. 3180–3189, Dec. 2017.
[17] J.-T. Dong and J. Wang, “Comparison of three image processing methods
realized by VC++ calling MATLAB,” Mod. Electron. Techn., vol. 35,
no. 16, pp. 46–49, Aug. 2012.
[18] J. L. Li, Z. W. Zhang, H. F. Ma, and X. Liu, “Research on license plate
recognition technology based on HALCON,” J. Northwest Normal Univ.
(Natural Sci.), vol. 51, no. 6, pp. 54–57, 2015.
[19] W. Yi, I. V. Gerasimov, S. A. Kuzmin, and H. J. He, “A stream Ye Zhang was born in Shaanxi, China, in 1988. She received the B.S. and
processing approach to distance measurement of integers in p-adic M.S. degrees in electronic information engineering from Xi’an Polytechnic
metric space,” in Proc. 20th IEEE Int. Conf. Soft Comput. Meas. (SCM), University, Xi’an, China, in 2011 and 2014, respectively. She is currently
Jul. 2017, pp. 617–620. pursuing the Ph.D. degree in mechatronic engineering with Xidian University,
[20] C. H. Yu and L. Y. Qi, “Binocular camera calibration based on Xi’an.
HALCON,” Elect. Des. Eng., vol. 25, no. 19, pp. 190–193, Oct. 2017. Her current research interests include intelligent power and online moni-
[21] Y. Liao, G. Li, Z. Ju, H. Liu, and D. Jiang, “Joint Kinect and multiple toring technology.
external cameras simultaneous calibration,” in Proc. 2nd Int. Conf. Adv.
Robot. Mechatronics (ICARM), Feb. 2018, pp. 305–310.
[22] A. Fetić, D. Jurić, and D. Osmanković, “The procedure of a camera
calibration using camera calibration toolbox for MATLAB,” in Proc.
35th Int. Conv. (MIPRO), May 2012, pp. 1752–1757.
[23] H. Cai, “The research on camera calibration and 3D
reconstruction method in visual measurement,” Harbin
Inst. Technol., Harbin, China, Jul. 2013. Available: Yongcan Zhu was born in Henan, China, in 1986. He received the B.S.
http://kns.cnki.net/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CMFD&dbname= and M.S. degrees in automation from Xi’an Polytechnic University, Xi’an,
CMFD0506&filename=2006165961.nh&uid China, in 2009 and 2012, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in mechatronic
[24] B. Jiang, G. A. Woodell, and D. J. Jobson, “Novel multi-scale retinex engineering from Xidian University, Xi’an, in 2017.
with color restoration on graphics processing unit,” J. Real-Time Image He is currently a Lecturer with the School of Electronics Information,
Process., vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 239–253, Jun. 2015. Xi’an Polytechnic University. His current research interests include the online
[25] M. L. Chen, C. X. Chen, and J. P. Gu, “Adaptive piecewise linear trans- monitoring technology and the wireless network sensor.
form method based on histogram,” Foreign Electron. Meas. Technol.,
vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 36–38, Feb. 2015.
[26] Q.-Q. Zhang, Y.-L. Zhang, and G.-H. Qi, “Segmentation of cucumber
disease leaves based on Otsu method,” J. Anhui Agricult. Sci., vol. 45,
no. 12, pp. 193–195 and 234, 2017.
[27] Y. Zhang, H. Jiang, D. Zhu, and Z. Wang, “Human contour extrac-
tion based on skeleton matching,” J. Syst. Simul., vol. 29, no. 11,
pp. 2774–2781, Nov. 2017. Guanjun Zhang (M’02) received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from
[28] Z. H. Diao, B. B. Wu, Y. Y. Wu, and Y. Q. Wei, “Application research Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China, in 1991, 1994, and 2001, respectively.
of skeleton extraction algorithm based on image processing,” Comput. He is currently a Professor of electrical engineering with Xi’an Jiaotong
Sci., vol. 43, no. 6A, pp. 232–235, Jun. 2016. University, where he is also a Ph.D. Supervisor and a National Distinguished
[29] L. Liu, Y. Liu, and Y. Tang, “Study on duration calculate model of Young Scholar. His current research interests include high-voltage dielectric
railway construction based on LSM,” in Proc. Int. Conf. Logistics, insulation, discharge physics and plasma technology, and online monitoring
Informat. Service Sci. (LISS), Jan. 2016, pp. 1–5. and fault diagnosis of the substation equipment.

Authorized licensed use limited to: Carmen Cornejo. Downloaded on January 11,2022 at 15:49:37 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.