A simulation environment for UAV-based real-time condition monitoring of solar tower power plants

Abstract

The development and testing of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based condition monitoring systems is timeconsuming, costly and poses safety risks. While numerous examples show that simulation environments are wellsuited to support the development process, existing environments fall short of simulating quantities specific tothe condition monitoring of solar tower power plants. To bridge this gap, we present a simulation environmentthat provides quantities necessary to investigate such systems in simulation, prior to their application inreal solar tower power plants. The presented environment models the state of the solar field and computesobservations of the field and reflections of a point light source, as seen from a virtual camera. In addition,it allows for the navigation of a simulated UAV in the virtual solar field in response to realistic UAVcontrol signals. The simulated concentrator corner points were found to match the concentrator corner pointsdetermined by a bundle adjustment measurement up to an RMSE = 23.7 mm before and RMSE = 4.6 mm afteraccounting for translational, rotational and scale errors. The simulated reflections of a point light source werefound to match the measured reflections up to an RMSE of 2.25 mrad in X-direction and 2.09 mrad in Y-directionin the concentrator coordinate system. After eliminating errors in the camera position estimate, concentratororientations and mirror surface slope errors, the remaining RMSE is 0.35 mrad in X-direction and 0.22 mrad inY-direction. We conclude that the proposed simulation environment is a valuable tool for the development ofUAV-based condition monitoring systems of solar tower power plants.