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These are the main conclusions drawn from the development of Radius

November 6, 2024

The Radius Project has put an end to the first stage of its development, after an intense and productive journey that began in 2021. During these months, the European project has researched and developed a technology that improves safety in the railway environment by monitoring signalling assets using drones.

Radius benefits

During these four years of work, Radius has proven to be of great value in these activities:

  • Condition monitoring of signalling assets: Images captured by UAS can be used for monitoring of coatings of signalling racks, light intensity of line-side signals, track circuit key parameters, temperature, point machine key parameters, etc.
  • Identification of vandalism: Detection of vandalism against signalling assets and railway installations close to the tracks.
  • Detection of malicious and nonmalicious radio frequency interference: The UAS can measure signals that are above given thresholds and have the capability of disturbing the signalling communications because of new radio transmissions, degradation of devices that cause emitting outside the usual spectrum, intentional disturbances, etc.
  • Wireless diagnostic data collection: The UAS can get enough diagnostic data to perform a real-time preliminary analysis aimed at identifying the immediate maintenance actions (e.g., tuning of some key parameters) to restore the operational conditions
  • Software updates of signalling assets: Signalling assets incur in degraded functionalities because of ageing and wearing of their parts. In most cases, an UAS can fine tune them, optimising their threshold settings or performing firmware updates using wireless technology, considering the security risks inherent to firmware upgrades
  • Clearance after human or mechanical intervention under track possession: UAS can also contribute to increase safety by using the visual sensors to verify that a working site is clear from human

Conclusions

Following the completion of the first stage of development, these are the main conclusions drawn by the project:

RADIUS conclusions

Achievements

  • Radius technology works in the railway environment: The Radius project has demonstrated that its technology is technically feasible and allows the use of drones to monitor the correct functioning of infrastructures critical to railway safety. Drones make it possible to carry out more frequent inspections, reduce costs and increase the safety of maintenance operations by avoiding travel and manual work. Moreover, the flights do not interfere with rail traffic.

  • The project is feasible due to the development of the docking station: Radius has developed the docking station, a platform strategically located at remote points on the tracks that allows drones to land automatically, recharge their batteries and synchronise the information collected during their inspection flights. These stations make the project viable because they allow longer flights, without the need to return to base. By extending the range and flight time of the drones, the efficiency of the inspections is improved, reducing costs, and increasing coverage by being able to work in BVLOS.

  • The information obtained is useful: Radius has proven not only to be technically feasible, but also that the information obtained during its reconnaissance flights is useful and suitable for assessing and monitoring the state of preservation of the crucial signalling assets. Radius makes it possible to detect any damage effectively to prevent rail traffic from being affected.

Future research

  • Improved navigation: Radius currently relies on the RTK system, but it would be desirable to have more means to eliminate this dependency. One possible solution would be to use Open-Source solutions such as EGNOS, OSNMA and GALILEO.

  • Asset management platform: Reconnaissance flights generate a lot of information that needs to be processed and archived efficiently so that it can be exploited to the full. Therefore, further steps need to be taken to develop and integrate a specialised and customised asset management system.

  • From prototype to commercial solution: Radius has managed to reach TRL7 level, but more research would be desirable to reach TRL9. The project has conducted successful validation campaigns, but the next step is to convert this prototype into an economically viable commercial solution on the market.

Other applications

  • In the railway domain: In addition to the use cases specifically developed in Radius, the technology can be easily adapted to other assets or other aspects of railway operations.

  • Applications in other sector: Radius has demonstrated its viability in the railway sector, but the technology has the potential to be viable for other assets and other uses cases within the rail sector itself. In addition, this technology canalso be used in other linear infrastructures with common characteristics with railway sector. It could be extrapolated with the use of the docking station and the image control and analysis procedure. This control system could be a revolution.

The first stage of the project, summarised in a video

The almost four years of development of Radius have been marked not only by the intense development of the technology, but also by the project's interest in making itself known to the public. To this end, Radius has been present at several conferences and trade fairs to explain the advantages of the project to specialised audiences.

This video shows the key moments of the project:

The first stage of development ended on 31 October 2024, but now a new one is beginning. During this time, the viability of the project has been demonstrated, as well as the market's interest in this solution. For the time being, Radius is a prototype and more research and development is needed before end customers can implement the solution to improve the security of their sectors.