Current inspections of railway infrastructure are commonly done manually, or by using dedicated special-purpose rail-maintenance trains. Visits along the tracks is done by humans and mobile sensors are typically mounted on trains.
Both these approaches imply downtime of the infrastructure. Special-purpose vehicles are commonly outfitted with high-quality sensors and can capture large amounts of data at relatively high speed – but are costly both to acquire and operate. Light maintenance, such as lubrication is commonly performed manually, exposing workers to the risk of entering ballast areas of railway infrastructure.
In this project SINTEF develops automatic camera and sensor systems to enable autonomous inspection and light maintenance of railway structures, and thus reducing the need for boots (i.e. humans) on the ballast.