Aea Technology Inc.

Sperry Rail Holdings, Inc.

David Henry Gilbert

Peter David Wesley

An aspect includes a vehicle that includes rail inspection sensors configured for capturing transducer data describing the rail, and a processor configured for receiving and processing the transducer data in near-real time to determine whether the captured transducer data identifies a suspected rail flaw. The processing includes inputting the captured transducer data to a machine learning system that has been trained to identify patterns in transducer data that indicate rail flaws. The processing also includes receiving an output from the machine learning system, the output indicating whether the captured transducer data identifies a suspected rail flaw. An alert is transmitted to an operator of the vehicle based at least in part on the output indicating that the captured transducer data identifies a suspected rail flaw. The alert includes a location of the suspected rail flaw and instructs the operator to stop the vehicle and to perform a repair action.

System and method for inspecting a rail using machine learning

The alignment of railway tracks may be monitored using an accelerometer () mounted on a bogie () of a railway vehicle to detect lateral accelerations, and a displacement transducer () to monitor the lateral displacements of a wheelset () relative to the bogie. The acceleration signals are digitised, and processed corresponding to double integration, so as to deduce the lateral displacements of the bogie, and in conjunction with the signals from the displacement transducer hence to determine the effective lateral displacements of the track. This can provide a more useful indication of the lateral positions of the rails than measurements of the gauge faces. Such equipment () may be installed in a service vehicle, and operate automatically, downloading resulting data to a remote base station at regular intervals.

Track monitoring equipment

For monitoring railway tracks on a frequent basis, instrumentation packages are installed in service vehicles ( ), for example in passenger carriages. The instrumentation package ( ) comprises sensors ( ) mounted on a bogie ( ) of the vehicle ( ), which provide data to a computer ( ). The computer ( ) processes the data to characterise the track quality, and stores the results tagged with positional information. At intervals these stored results are automatically transferred by radio to a remote base station ( ). An operator at the base station can monitor the track quality daily, and hence advise on cost-effective maintenance schedules.

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Wirksworth, United Kingdom

David Henry Gilbert