High-Precision Low-Cost Gimballing Platform for Long-Range Railway Obstacle Detection

Abstract

Increasing demand for rail transportation results transportation by rail, resulting in denser and more high-speed usage of the existing railway network, making makes new and more advanced vehicle safety systems necessary. Furthermore, high traveling speeds and the greatlarge weights of trains lead to long braking distances—all of which necessitates Long braking distances, due to high travelling speeds and the massive weight of trains, necessitate a Long-Range Obstacle Detection (LROD) system, capable of detecting humans and other objects more than 1000 m in advance. According to current research, only a few sensor modalities are capable of reaching this far and recording sufficiently accurate enoughdata to distinguish individual objects. The limitation of these sensors, such as a 1D-Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), is however a very narrow Field of View (FoV), making it necessary to use ahigh-precision means of orienting to target them at possible areas of interest. To close this research gap, this paper presents a novel approach to detecting railway obstacles by developinga high-precision pointing mechanism, for the use in a future novel railway obstacle detection system In this work such a high-precision pointing mechanism is developed, capable of targeting aiming a 1D-LiDAR at humans or objects at the required distance. This approach addresses To address the challenges of a low target pricelimited budget, restricted access to high-precision machinery and equipment as well as unique requirements of our target application., a novel pointing mechanism has been designed and developed. By combining established elements from 3D printers and Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines with a double-hinged lever system, simple and cheaplow-cost components are capable of precisely orienting an arbitrary sensor platform. The system’s actual pointing accuracy has been evaluated using a controlled, in-door, long-range experiment. The device was able to demonstrate a precision of 6.179 mdeg, which is at the limit of the measurable precision of the designed experiment.

The Dragonfly Spectral Line Mapper: design and first light

“…The gearbox is placed between the motor and the encoder to correct for any potential backlash. 33 The small form factor of the DYNAMIXEL actuator allows it to sit on the central axis of the Filter-Tilter. This direct drive placement allows the angle sensor in the actuator to directly measure the rotation position angle of the filter.…”

Toward the Enhancement of Rail Sustainability: Demonstration of a Holistic Approach to Obstacle Detection in Operational Railway Environments

“…It is a critical component of modern railway systems aiming for safer, more efficient, and more reliable transport networks. The majority of OD systems in railways are deployed as on-board systems installed on trains themselves, consisting of different on-board sensors such as cameras and lidar sensors [4][5][6][7][8]. These on-board systems are designed to continuously monitor the tracks ahead and detect any obstacles or hazards that may pose a risk to the train's safe operation.…”

Local and Global Information in Obstacle Detection on Railway Tracks

“…High vehicle speeds, low braking forces, and the great weight of trains result in braking distances exceeding several hundreds of meters, out of the range of common obstacle detection sensor systems, such as LiDAR or stereo vision. We thus propose a novel active long-range obstacle detection system, consisting of a zoomable high-focal length camera on an actuated platform [2], to detect potential obstacles, even at great distance [3] as shown in Figure 1. A critical aspect of such a system is the accuracy of the visual detection of known and unknown entities on the railway.…”