On November 28, 2019, Tohoku Electric Power Company (Tohoku, Headquarters: Miyagi Prefecture) and SRA Tohoku (Headquarters: Sendai), an IT company that develops computer programming and AI applications[1], announced that they have launched an Artificial Intelligence (AI) application for assessing the deterioration level of transmission towers.

The AI application can instantaneously evaluate the deterioration level of transmission towers based on the images captured by drones. The AI application’s database will gather and combine the information regarding deteriorated towers, including images of the towers and their geolocation. The integrated database should help utility companies to easily identify the deterioration trends for the entire transmission power systems as well as helping them to centrally monitor and assess towers’ conditions.

By using this application, the planning of repair work that previously took about 25 hours can be carried out within about 4 hours. It can also avoid human error from visual inspection when assessing steel towers’ deterioration levels.[2]

[1] https://www.sra-tohoku.co.jp/ai-pkg/

[2] http://www.tohoku-epco.co.jp/news/normal/1204579_1049.html