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Description
Hepta is an Estonian company that provides easily deployable end-to-end inspection solution for large networks: from smart software and rich analytics to hands-on support from specialists and hardware facilitation.
The monitoring and inspection of power lines has a fundamental role in mitigating electric supply risks, as the mandatory inspections provide essential input for maintenance plans and increase the safety of the critical infrastructure. In order to reduce inspection costs and overcome the shortcomings of traditional inspection methods, power network operators have started to implement unmanned aerial vehicle in inspection work. There are however significant technological bottlenecks present which prevent utilizing such technology. State-of-the-art inspection methods cannot cover large areas in a short period of time and at a reasonable price.
The main objective of the project is to develop the first turnkey end-to-end inspection technology, which automates the power inspections and the following inspection data analysis for large areas. Technology has reached minimum viable product (MVP) phase and first commercialisation efforts have started in order to validate the concept and gain market traction. However, to maximise the value of the technology and scale the solution, further development is needed. In addition, Hepta will develop data processing platform and digital twin of power line maintenance called uBird, which will widen Hepta’s reach even further. The objective of the project is to complete fully functional autonomous power grid inspection system technology for full scale commercialisation by upgrading the inspection process and automating data analysis and delivery of the results.
Summary of project results
Project addressed the electric supply risks as its main challenge. In order to mitigate risks in critical infrastructure as power lines, an ICT solution was developed to provide essential input for maintenance plans and increase the safety of these critical infrastructures.
In the project, a software product was developed that helps to digitise the physical assets. It''s possible to use the product as a GIS tool to have an overview of the assets in the digital form, analyse and annotate the digital data manually or with the help of AI, and develop the AI using the product. Software now enables uploading of the data to the cloud platform, and associate the data to the physical assets. The platform supports RGB images, thermal camera images and 3D point-clouds (LiDAR and photogrammetry). Viewing physical assets in a digital format gives a better overview of the assets to the asset owners about the state of their assets.
The software product is a web application and is accessible through a web browser from almost any computer device, including a phone or a tablet. The users can view the digital assets and annotate any valuable information to the digital data. The users can do an inventory of their assets so they would have a better overview. The users can also mark down issues that they find on the assets, and extract an actionable report to further plan the maintenance for their assets, so their assets would have a longer lifetime. In order to make the analysis of the digital assets faster, a machine-learning models have been developed that can detect various objects automatically.
Throughout the project models that can detect issues and elements on the power grid tower elements were developed, like a broken insulator, tilted cross-arm, etc. Project Promoter managed to implement a workflow where AI is helping the human analyst review the data and find relevant information faster. Further on, the software tool was developed so it would be possible to train the ML models using that tool. Such model development functionality is currently available only to the Hepta employees as an internal testing phase, but it''s on further plan to make it available to the customers.
The product is used to provide the analysis services for customers like power grid operators, solar panel operators, etc.
Project activities have been successfully completed and the software product and machine-learning models were developed for detecting issues and other objects of the critical assets such as power lines.
Summary of bilateral results
Throughout the Norway Green ICT project Hepta worked with the partner ICB Digital. The cooperation can be considered productive. As Project Promoter Hepta developed the software solutions for digitalisation and efficient inspection of the power grids, ICB was mainly involved as a software development partner. All input regarding the tasks to work on was from Hepta and ICB was involved in parts of the software development tasks. Partner had regular meetings to review the work that has been done and plan forthcoming tasks.