Can you describe your project in a few words?

Our long-term goal is to develop an integrated drone + AI system for electricity grid diagnostics, which will contribute to reducing economic losses, inspection costs, and environmental impact by providing a reliable AI-based tool for timely automatic defect detection in aerial imagery of the transmission power grid.

Who will help implement the AI solution?

We bring together a dedicated, balanced, cross-functional team with combined decades of experience. Our lead AI developer Karolis has 4+ years of experience developing AI-based solutions for Lithuania's leading IT companies. Indrė (Chief Innovation Officer, PhD in applied physics) has led R&D of custom analytics solutions for multi-sensor UAV data since 2019. Irmantas (an expert engineer with 17+ years of experience in grid maintenance as well as a master's degree in electrical technology and management) will be representing the client's needs and consulting on the technical aspects of inspections.

What is the AI solution the project plans to implement?

THRUST-AID is based on deep-learning models for computer vision that are finetuned using annotated ultra-high resolution aerial imagery. During this project, we will use the extensive, high-resolution, real-life data of the Lithuanian electricity transmission grid to train automated AI/ML-based image recognition algorithms to identify the most common electricity grid elements and their defects. Each detected defect will have assigned a unique ID based on GIS metadata and classified depending on severity & risk and reported automatically via a user-friendly interface to enable predictive maintenance.