AdeNet: Deep learning architecture that identifies damaged electrical insulators in power lines

Ceramic insulators are important to electronic systems, designed and installed to protect humans from the danger of high voltage electric current. However, insulators are not immortal, and natural deterioration can gradually damage them. Therefore, the condition of insulators must be continually monitored, which is normally done using UAVs. UAVs collect many images of insulators, and these images are then analyzed to identify those that are damaged. Here we describe AdeNet as a deep neural network designed to identify damaged insulators, and test multiple approaches to automatic analysis of the condition of insulators. Several deep neural networks were tested, as were shallow learning methods. The best results (88.8%) were achieved using AdeNet without transfer learning. AdeNet also reduced the false negative rate to 7%. While the method cannot fully replace human inspection, its high throughput can reduce the amount of labor required to monitor lines for damaged insulators and provide early warning to replace damaged insulators.