Recently, the first "UAV Virtual Cockpit" technology in China's power industry has been put into practical application in Wuhan, enabling remote real-time control of unmanned aerial vehicles to conduct refined, flexible and immersive inspections on substations. It has covered 119 outdoor substations in Wuhan, with an operating area of more than 8,000 square kilometers.
This technology deeply integrates real-time control, 3D visualization and high-speed data transmission technologies. It requires no additional hardware modification and can be built using existing UAVs and office computers. Sitting in the office, operation and maintenance personnel can control UAVs dozens of kilometers away to take off smoothly, turn flexibly and hover precisely beside equipment with a simple click of the mouse to complete multi-angle shooting and inspection, with real-time and smooth image transmission.
According to reports, manual inspection of a single substation used to take nearly a whole day, but now it can be finished in "the time it takes to drink a cup of tea". Compared with traditional UAV inspections along preset routes, the "virtual cockpit" allows "on-demand flight and inspection", enabling operators to manually intervene at any time for "close-up detailed checks". This has greatly improved the pertinence and flexibility of inspections, effectively solving the contradiction between the increasing number of substations and the limited number of operation and maintenance personnel, and providing replicable experience for the construction of a new-type power system.
