Extraction of power lines using mobile LiDAR data of roadway environment

Assessing the field conditions of power line corridor is important for electrical power providers. Monitoring and management of power line corridor are essential for electric resource management and power corridor safety. Mobile LiDAR is becoming popular in mapping of power line corridors along the roadway. Power lines extraction using mobile LiDAR point cloud of different roadway settings are presented in this paper. The proposed method works in four steps. Initially the horizontal segment containing power lines in the three-dimensional point cloud are filtered out. Then the two-dimensional point density based refining is used to remove the trees and buildings. Hough transform is used to extract power lines and further the missing portions are reconstructed. Three test sites each from urban, peri-urban and rural roadway environment and having different level of complexities along power line corridor are chosen to test the proposed method comprehensively. Occlusions especially the vegetation encroachment in complex roadway environment and their effects in power line extraction is highlighted in this paper. The partially occluded power lines are successfully extracted. The average correctness and completeness of 98.84% and 90.84%, respectively are achieved in the urban, peri-urban and rural test sites.