Solar Powered wireless Rail Track monitoring System

The recent development in railway inspection, monitoring and tracking has advanced throughout the past decade around the Globe. Several countries like China and Japan have already introduced Artificial intelligence to their safety protocols in preventing railway accidents one of

Project Title

Solar Powered wireless Rail Track monitoring System

Project Area of Specialization

Electrical/Electronic Engineering

Project Summary

The recent development in railway inspection, monitoring and tracking has advanced

throughout the past decade around the Globe. Several countries like China and Japan

have already introduced Artificial intelligence to their safety protocols in preventing

railway accidents one of these is “Tunnel Fox” an autonomous vehicle for railway inspection.

                 Talking about the Railway industry in Pakistan. Pakistan has faced approximately 25 major accidents over the past 10 years, which were all caused by derailments. The technology available in Pakistan has just started to develop but has not reached the level existing elsewhere. We are aiming to introduce A.I monitoring to the Railway inspection department. Real time monitoring of defected tracks and track beds.

                                                                                                                   The railway accidents witnessed in the past decade is mainly due to defects in the railway track. This has put an enormous burden on the railway authorization to minimize the loss of human life. Investigations show that majority cause of these accidents is due to damage of the railway tracks

Project Objectives

The main aim and objective of this project as follows

• To make sustainable cart that focuses on maintenance of high standards
• To make job easier for the maintenance  crew so that they can perform their work efficiently and effectively
• To decrease carbon emission by power this project by green energy.
• To prevent railway accidents by introducing AI and IoT to this aera.

Project Implementation Method

1. 1. Static wireless sensor network (WSN):

                                      A solar powered WSN that will be located at rail bed's bolted joints that will detect tilts due to weight of train and alert the user of any extra tilting. This network will transfer data through Wi-Fi using a micro-controller (node-mcu) which will be programmed using Arduino IDE C++ language. Different sensors (gyroscope, accelerometer, temperature, inclinometer, humidity) will be connected to the Wi-Fi module, the data is then transmitted to a base junction where data is collected and processed. Maximum power point tracking method will be used to charge the batteries of components through solar panels. Using master-slave for ESP32 to develop a star network for the WSN.

1. 1. Electric Cart:

                 Electric cart is used to demonstrate the effects of real-life train. This dummy cart is powered by DC motor which is powered 24v battery. This DC motor is being controlled by PWM speed controller. This cart will be equipped with different senor arrays which calculate different parameters. The other system which is used to determine track health and its defects by using image processing using high speed camera by observing cracks, skid marks while breaking.

1. 1. Artificial Intelligence:

                                     Artificial intelligence is used to detect cracks on railway tracks. Cracks in railway track are detected using neural network classification approach. The proposed method contains the following stages as pre-processing, feature extraction, classification and segmentation. In pre-processing stage, the rail track image is enhanced using adaptive histogram equalization technique. This technique enhances the rail track image to detect the cracks more effectively with respect to any environmental conditions. Then, spatial domain pre-processed image is transformed into multi resolution image using Gabor transform. This multi resolution image exhibits frequency, time and orientation. The rail track recording or capturing equipment consists of light source and line camera. This recording equipment is slowly moved over the rail track. At this time, the light source generates the light which is passed over the rail track. This light is passed over both the tracks of rail. The line camera which is placed at the rear of the image capturing equipment captures the images of the rail tracks.

Benefits of the Project

More Efficient Use of Time

Easy maintance

Making maintance free of human errors

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

150w solar panel is being used for charging the 24v 38Ah batteries that power 2 DC motors

AI is used to detect different type of anomolies on tracks which can prevent accidents in near future.

Final Deliverable of the Project

Hardware System

Core Industry

Transportation

Other Industries

IT

Core Technology

Artificial Intelligence(AI)

Other Technologies

Internet of Things (IoT)

Sustainable Development Goals

Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

Required Resources

If you need this project, please contact me on contact@adikhanofficial.com