Preventing disaster; rail inspections
Rail inspection is the practice of examining rail tracks for flaws that could lead to catastrophic failures.
Roads and railways are vital infrastructures worldwide, and faults can lead to transportation delays, smaller accidents or even major disasters.
Here, early detection is key, and the best way to identify flaws is through frequent and thorough rail inspections.
Unfortunately, inspecting thousands of miles of rails is costly and time consuming,
and analyzing inspection results is difficult and ineffective.
Or it used to be.
Typical defects
Corrosion –
Bending –
Fissures –
Temperature stresses –
Shelling –
Drones in rail inspections
Because rails are often hundreds or thousands of miles long, the UAV’s used for these types of inspections, are usually fixed wing drones, which can fly longer distances on a charge compared to Multi-rotor drones.
Drones can perform rail inspections extremely fast, compared to traditional methods.
The results are extremely high resolution images, on which faulty rails are easily identifiable.
Using drones enables inspectors to capture data from the exact angle needed
– even on the most inaccessible stretches, during live traffic hours.
Rail inspection is one of the areas, which will benefit greatly from BVLOS, if laws change.
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Automating data analysis
Since half the struggle is analyzing captured data, the benefits of utilizing drones are diminished, if the visual data is not properly managed.
Using a rail inspection software like Scopito to store and analyze inspection images, makes this task faster and less monotonous.
Analysis can also be outsourced all together.
Here, Scopito’s team of professional rail inspectors analyse the data, using a combination of human- and artificial intelligence.
AI makes the inspections faster, and the results more reliable.
This is especially useful, for the large amounts of data from rail inspections.
Furthermore, the custom maps feature makes it easy for repair crews to identify the exact place on the tracks, that needs care.
Advantages
- Analyzing flaws and weaknesses becomes easier, as the information is presented in a visual format. This provides a better idea of the type of damage, and the time needed to rectify it.
- Sharing images is easy as any authorized user can gain access from any place at any time.
As a result, risks of misunderstandings and misreporting between the analysis- and repair team is diminished.
- The visual information is stored safely in Scopito data centers, available for future record and reference.
