Railway defect false alarm mitigation by multiple track configuration analysis

Abstract

A track defect false alarm mitigation apparatus for a rail vehicle that is conveyed on a railway includes a processor onboard the rail vehicle that is constructed to perform feature detection on a track image captured from the railway to label an attribute in the track image as a feature of the railway captured in the track image. Model parameters for a track detection model are accepted from another processor. A track detection model is executed using the model parameters provided thereto to generate a track configuration context that predicts the locations of track configuration components. An attempt is made to register the feature and the track configuration context one with the other. The issuance of an alert of a track defect is excluded except in response to the feature registering with the track configuration context to a confidence level.