Mass_Transit_March_2020 - 31

Zephyr Rail

UAV
Applications
Takeoff

UAV TECHNOLOGY
can provide rich
data about a
section of track
without the
need to stop
traffic.

While the technology is there, regulations are
struggling to keep up, creating a need for experts in
both railroad operations and rules associated with
the use of unmanned aerial vehicles.
By Megan Perrero, assistant editor

NMANNED AERIAL VEHIcles (UAVs) have numerous
applications for the rail industry, ranging from track
inspections and mapping
to detecting trespassers
and creating a safer rightof-way. But a successful
application requires sound
engineering, sound planning and
a working knowledge of rules and
regulations from multiple federal
agencies, including the Federal
Railroad Administration (FRA)
and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
With this in mind, private
firms such as 360 Rail Services and
Zephyr Rail and regulators, such
as FRA, have worked to ensure
UAVs fit into solutions that not
only gather needed information

but ensure safe operation.

Applications to help
with maintenance

When it comes to track inspections, 360 Rail Services starts off
with understanding what the client
needs and where the latest inspections have taken place. From there,
the company obtains authority
from the necessary supervisors
and operational entities and then
facilitates a safety debrief meeting -
all before the UAV is granted liftoff.
"It's not something where we
just throw a drone up in the air
and get going," explained Peyton
McCain, marketing manager, 360
Rail Services. "There's a lot of
planning that goes into it initially to ensure there's the maximum
amount of safety possible."

360 Rail Services

360 RAIL
Services
custom built the
payload that is
attached to its
UAVs.

Once the safety and planning
procedures are put in place, the
company sends the UAV into the
air and flies it over the center line,
which can be done on any given
track. As the drone flies over the
tracks, it collects high resolution
imagery, as well as "highly accurate GPS information and highly
accurate altitude information,"
McCain explains.
"This gives us a data set we can
feed into an artificial intelligence
[program] that will go through
and identify a wide range of track
defects," McCain said. "For example, because we can so accurately
calculate the position in altitude,
we can provide gage within a oneeighth of an inch."
Instead of solely relying on a
human to walk the track for inspections, a UAV automates this
process with machine analysis and
acts as a supplemental tool to help
mitigate human error. In addition
to gage, the UAV can also capture
a range of track defects such as tie
grading; the presence of or lack of
fasteners; if tie plates are cutting
in; and track geometry. The company is currently working on using
UAVs to assess switch points.
For the artificial intelligence
to complete a track assessment, it
needs accurate data and high-resolution images. This required 360
Rail Services to build a custom payload - a combination of a computer,
an oximeter and a camera - to be
attached to the drone. The oximeter,
how the altitude is calculated accurately, talks to the camera, that then
talks to the computer integrated
into the payload, which ultimately
talks to the drone and is how the
data is captured while the UAV is
in flight. The data is then uploaded
to the cloud-based artificial intelligence program for assessment.
The artificial intelligence program can accurately pinpoint defects because it was trained over
thousands of pictures across hundreds of miles of track, McCain
explains. The program was then
trained to recognize what would

MARCH 2020 | MassTransitmag.com | Mass Transit |

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