Pantograph Detection Algorithm with Complex Background and External Disturbances

As an important equipment for high-speed railway (HSR) to obtain electric power from outside, the state of the pantograph will directly affect the operation safety of HSR. In order to solve the problems that the current pantograph detection method is easily affected by the environment, cannot effectively deal with the interference of external scenes, has a low accuracy rate and can hardly meet the actual operation requirements of HSR, this study proposes a pantograph detection algorithm. The algorithm mainly includes three parts: the first is to use you only look once (YOLO) V4 to detect and locate the pantograph region in real-time; the second is the blur and dirt detection algorithm for the external interference directly affecting the high-speed camera (HSC), which leads to the pantograph not being detected; the last is the complex background detection algorithm for the external complex scene “overlapping” with the pantograph when imaging, which leads to the pantograph not being recognized effectively. The dirt and blur detection algorithm combined with blob detection and improved Brenner method can accurately evaluate the dirt or blur of HSC, and the complex background detection algorithm based on grayscale and vertical projection can greatly reduce the external scene interference during HSR operation. The algorithm proposed in this study was analyzed and studied on a large number of video samples of HSR operation, and the precision on three different test samples reached 99.92%, 99.90% and 99.98%, respectively. Experimental results show that the algorithm proposed in this study has strong environmental adaptability and can effectively overcome the effects of complex background and external interference on pantograph detection, and has high practical application value.