Composite real-time image processing for railways track profile measurement

Abstract

Checking railway status is critical to guarantee high operating safety, proper maintenance schedule, and low maintenance and operating costs. This operation consists of the analysis of the rail profile and level as well as overall geometry and ondulation. Traditional detection systems are based on mechanical devices in contact with the track. Innovative approaches are based on laser scanning and image analysis. This paper presents an efficient composite technique for track profile extraction with real-time image processing. High throughput is obtained by algorithmic prefiltering to restrict the image area containing the track profile, while high accuracy is achieved by neural reconstruction of the profile itself.

ViSyR: a Vision System for Real-Time Infrastructure Inspection

“…Nevertheless, detection of hook bolts is demanded in Paragraph 7.6. Even if some works have been performed, which deal with railway problems -such as track profile measurement (e.g., [Alippi et al (2000)]), obstruction detection (e.g., [Sato et al (1998)]), braking control (e.g., [Xishi et al (1992)…”

Visual Indexing of Large Scale Train-Borne Video for Rail Condition Perceiving

“…Nowadays, the patrol train has been widely utilized for ensuring the safety of railway. The cameras installed in the various spots of a moving train can be used for different railway inspection tasks such as the track profile measurement, rail track defect detection, rail bolts detection and the inspection of overhead contact system [1]- [4]. One of which is to install a camera in front of the patrol train to capture the whole video along the railway for environment surveillance, including missing communication units and bolts on the track, broken fences, unpredictable objects falling into the rail area or hanging on wires on the top of rails.…”

“…the camera with rolling angle γ is sampling the rail track left and right. The offset of the SRSP D i r 1 and D i r 2 can be expressed as…”

Automated Visual Inspection of Railroad Tracks

“…Railroads are vital to the infrastructure of most countries, but many inspection tasks are performed manually by a human inspector. Computer vision algorithms are useful in several railroad tasks, including track inspection [1]- [8], ballast inspection [9], rail profile measurement [10], safety appliance inspection [11], and monitoring intermodal transport [12]- [14]. Other problems involving infrastructure inspection could also benefit from computer vision.…”