Autonomous 3D Visual-Thermal Inspection for Utility-Scale Solar Farms
Utility-scale photovoltaic (PV) inspection is dominated by aerial surveys, which are effective for identifying module-level hot cells but provide limited visibility of critical components located under the array, including connectors, cabling, fasteners and structural elements. These assets are difficult to inspect consistently at scale, and their defects are often spatially small, partially occluded and difficult to localise from isolated images. We present an automated 3D visual-thermal inspection system (Tricorder) for under-panel PV asset inspection. The approach combines LiDAR-inertial Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) with geometrically calibrated RGB and thermal imagery ...
| Authors | Lachlan Tychsen-Smith, Mark Cox, Brett Wood et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.AI |
| Published | 13 October 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 13 October 2026 |
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