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BIA-Brukerstyrt innovasjonsarena

Boots Off Ballast - Robots for safe and efficient railway maintenance

Alternative title: Boots Off Ballast - Roboter for sikkert og effektivt vedlikehold av jernbane

Awarded: NOK 4.1 mill.

Railway worker safety has and will always be highest priority for railway maintenance companies, and there is willingness in the industry to invest in solutions which can increase the safety. There is an industry wide push to reduce the number of 'boots on ballast', i.e. reducing the number of workers on and around rail-lines. Current inspections and light maintenance of railway infrastructure are commonly done manually, inspectors must physically enter the dangerous ballast region to visually measure and inspect assets. Alternatively, the tasks can be performed by using dedicated special-purpose rail-maintenance trains. Both these approaches imply downtime of the infrastructure. Special-purpose vehicles are commonly outfitted with high-quality sensors and can capture large amounts of data at relatively high speed – but are costly both to acquire and operate and availability of such hardware is scarce. Light maintenance, such as lubrication is commonly performed manually. BOB is a safer and more cost-efficient digital process for railway asset inspection and interaction, based on a lightweight robot system that is capable of railway travel. The system will reduce the need for humans in the dangerous areas of railways and reduce cost of inspection and light maintenance. BOB involves robotizing lighter maintenance in railway infrastructure . The first maintenance task that will be automated is lubrication of turnouts, which is a highly repetitive task that needs to be done every 2-4 weeks. Norway has 4,200 turnouts and Germany has 66,000, and considering the needed downtime, clearly significant gains can be had by optimizing this work. The robot platform used for light maintenance in the project will also be outfitted with a sensor suite that enables the robot to concurrently do high-resolution inspection tasks, such as measure of wear or fault detection.

BOB is a safer and more cost-efficient digital process for railway asset inspection and interaction, based on a lightweight robot system that is capable of railway travel. The system will reduce the need for humans in the dangerous areas of railways and reduce cost of inspection and light maintenance. Railway worker safety has and will always be highest priority for railway maintenance companies, and there is willingness in the industry to invest in solutions which can increase the safety. Current inspections of railway infrastructure are commonly done manually, or by using dedicated special-purpose rail-maintenance trains. Visits along the tracks is done by humans and mobile sensors are typically mounted on trains. Both these approaches imply downtime of the infrastructure. Special-purpose vehicles are commonly outfitted with high-quality sensors and can capture large amounts of data at relatively high speed – but are costly both to acquire and operate. Light maintenance, such as lubrication is commonly performed manually, exposing workers to the risk of entering ballast areas of railway infrastructure.

Funding scheme:

BIA-Brukerstyrt innovasjonsarena