Autonomous rail inspection

Abstract

This paper deals with the detection of cracks in railway tracks. If these defects are not examined and controlled at the earlier stage, they might lead to number of derailments which results in heavy loss of life and property. The numbers of derailments are increasing day by day. The proposed rail crack detection robot detects the faulty rail track automatically without any human intervention and communicates wirelessly with the base station. The robot can detect both internal and external cracks in the rail track. If required these cracks are detected simultaneously and communicated effectively with the base station. The main advantage when compared with the traditional detection techniques include lower cost, higher accuracy, precise location and less analysis time.