Remote monitoring and detection of rail track obstructions

Abstract

Railway snow and sand monitoring has become an important safety issue, as they pose a serious threat to lives, property, and security. Snow disasters every year bring immeasurable losses to society, and sand obstructions can cause the shutdown of railway lines for weeks. This paper presents a detailed design and implementation of a non-contact railway monitoring system using a camera mounted on a mobile platform. The captured image is processed to identify the level of obstruction on a rail track. The goal is to transmit the obstruction data to the cloud in real time and enable monitoring using a web based graphical user interface. Once the obstruction crosses a predetermined threshold, the system will alert the officials.