Autonomous Railway Track Crack Detection and Accident Prevention System

摘要

Train derailment is a predominant issue that needs to be solved, the major cause of the derailment is due to cracks and bridges on the track. To overcome this problem we have proposed an autonomous system (Robot) that uses an ultrasonic sensor with a range of 30 cm primarily based on distance measurement and density sensor to detect deeper cracks, the sensor is used to detect cracks present on the railway track by sending ultrasonic waves. As soon as the crack is detected the GPS Sensor is used to find out the latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates of the area where the crack is detected. The detected crack along with the exact location is sent to a nearby railway station using a GSM module. These data are then sent to the cloud server which is then analysed and compared with the threshold and the cracks can be rectified on the exact location of the damage. The proposed self-governing system is a robot along with wheels and motors which are controlled by a motor driver. Here we are using an Arduino Uno Microcontroller. These sensors and modules are integrated with this Arduino UNO board. The board is uploaded with a program using the Arduino IDE to carry out the crack detection function. This board takes readings from the ultrasonic sensor and these readings are continuously stored in the cloud for analysis and it accordingly communicates with the other module to effectively detect cracks beneath the surface of the tracks and on the surface.