DG-RAIL
The DG – RAIL prototype is an autonomous railway vehicle for the digitization and predictive maintenance of transport infrastructures in the railway sector. The air-ground inspection systems for the railway environment are based on the collaborative operation between diverse systems oriented towards a massive data capture and its coordinated and efficient treatment. The prototype is operative, and this unprecedented approach is making possible the evolution towards predictive maintenance of railway infrastructures and their environment, replacing the eminently corrective maintenance that is currently carried out all over the world. So, the unmanned railway vehicle is composed of advanced air-ground systems for the synchronized inspection and digitalization of the railway network, and the autonomous vehicle has been developed using a robust structure that can be moved on rails in a stable way that allows integrating the sensors and necessary embedded devices for the accurate inspection. The set of coordinated devices can carry out automatic tasks of global inspection of the railway infrastructure and superstructure (inspection of track geometry, inspection of defects in track-rail elements, fasteners, sleepers, ballast, catenary, structures attached to the track, drainage areas, etc.). The autonomous railway vehicle incorporates a new technology that is useful and easy to implement in the railway sector.
FERRODRON
Ferrodron is an ultralight unmanned vehicle for automatic inspection, maintenance and surveillance of track and railway infrastructure with intelligent positioning and behaviour through computer vision and combined sensors. The prototype is a small, ultralight, and unmanned vehicle, which has sufficient autonomy to move autonomously along the track to carry out inspection and surveillance tasks of the infrastructure remotely, and is equipped with computer vision, embedded intelligent systems, sensors and actuators. The intelligent system can identify, measure, process and send data to the control centre in real-time. So, the automatic inspection vehicle is in continuous communication with the control centre, sending images of the state of the railway infrastructure and the necessary alerts to carry out the maintenance works immediately. This allows a complete and automatic diagnosis of the status of any specific element of the track and automatic defect detection. The ultralight unmanned vehicle has the optimal Weight-Speed-Autonomy ratio, by incorporating small sensors, actuators, embedded processing devices and ultralight elements in the whole structure, then this prototype minimizes the weight and dimensions of the autonomous vehicle to maximize the autonomy of operation on the railway track, that is, a vehicle of reduced size and weight that maximize the autonomy to perform a specific inspection mission.
AVATTRACK
Avattrack is a precision and high-performance intelligent robotic system for automatic tamping guidance and railway construction and maintenance optimization, based on computer vision and sensor fusion. The intelligent system has been developed for measuring, processing and sending data from the deviation of the railway track to the tamping machines with the required precision. The intelligent robotic prototype, with the on-board intelligent automatic measurement system, identifies the external references by means of computer vision, and accurate sensors and actuators, and estimates the measures at 50 meters in front of the railway tamping machine. The prototype aligns the measurement system with the previously identified external references by controlling its actuators in real time. Once the measurements have been carried out and validated, the system detect and identify the following references, then the cycle is repeated successively. In this way the measures and the correction process can be carried out in real time and continuously with the tamping machine that executes the correction of the railway track.