From WonkoWiki

Welcome to WonkoWiki Project LINE EYE You've reached the Project LINE EYE. 20 articles in English

Projects Lists Archive All portals

LINE EYE

Introduction Last winter we experienced a major wind storm with record gusts here in the North West that downed trees along hundreds of miles of DC power lines. Our family was out of power for about five days (just long enough for ice to form in the toilet bowl) and we lived less than 300 feet from a nearby transmission lines at the time. I was able to walk the road in both directions for quite some distance and learned that the utility supplier employs helicopters to gain intelligence about where a power outage may have occurred. All told I think I counted three different whirly birds racing from west to east looking for down lines. Both helicopter and fixed wing aircraft were used extensively all over the region for sometime after the wind storm. In addition to the amount of money it cost to repair the lines I’d guess that the utility supplier spent nearly half a million on the flight time and pilot fees to audit their lines nearest us alone. Watching the air activity and the eventual repair work along the transmission lines planted a seed of an idea in my head that has started to grow with my interest in mobile robotics. Vision The system I have in mind has three parts. A mobile ground based control station, a mobile aerial antenna relay that can be deployed and later recovered, and a low-cost, low-altitude UAV unit used to conduct line audits over great distances. The system could be used as the basis for a small business which develops aerial imagery of ground based targets for a fraction of the cost necessary to do the same from piloted craft. It may be possible to increase response time and drastically reduce cost associated with such efforts on an hourly basis for product consumers.

Concept

Included is a brief conceptualization which should shed some visual light on the intent of the project. The idea is not limited in application to monitoring and marking damaged transmission lines, but this is where it started for me.

Phased Design Objectives

The project will be broken down into components and each component system will undergo various development phases before field deployment. This is to ensure quality, reliability, and interoperability as the project as a whole moves forward.

UAV Design Objectives

There are several key mission characteristics some of which will affect the airframe and some which will influence the airfoil.

Primary considerations:

1. UAV will be capable of extended flights (4 hours at ~40 mph with minimum battery payload, should be able to extend range with additional battery payload).
2. Aircraft will be fault tolerant. Airframe and airfoil should be constructed of resilient material that may be field repairable.
3. UAV will be able to carry the addition of at least 32 oz and as much as 64 oz of instrumentation (total payload not including battery, propulsion system, robotic pilot, radio relay or control systems).
4. System should be hand launch-able.
5. System should have stable, predictable flight characteristics.
6. Aircraft (not including pay load or control systems) should be inexpensive and easy to fabricate.
7. Control systems and instrumentation should be easy to install and remove in the field.

I realize that I may be asking for the world on a platter. I’m only in the fact-finding, research, stare-at-the-wall-until-inspiration-strikes-me part of the project at the moment by I can envision what a usual mission profile for my imaginary aircraft might look like and then guess about the rest.

Weights may be drastically misrepresented here. The baseline for my guess work in this instance is by way of comparison to larger, less portable systems employed in military applications. Deconstructed consumer electronics can be hacked together with a significant savings in mass since they don’t require much in the way of hardening. Battery mass and capacity remain about the same however.

Also it would be super cool if it were red.

Reference Information

Seperating links to reference information here.