Transportation Research Procedia publishes a paper on the benefits of Radius
December 14, 2023
Transportation Research Procedia, part of ScienceDirect, a leading source for scientific, technical, and medical research, has published the paper presented in the TRA 2022 Conference held in November 2022 in Lisbon.
The paper presents the challenges, objectives, and benefits of the Radius project for the digitization process in the railway sector.
The paper highlights that currently railway signaling asset monitoring is based on three alternative methods: human maintenance, wired solutions and monitoring trains. According to the paper, "these methods impose severe limitations in terms of safety issues, initial investment and complexity, operating costs, limited set of the diagnostic data processed, and track occupation". The direct consequence of these limitations is that maintenance activities are not carried out optimally, resulting in failures that, in addition to temporarily interrupting rail traffic, entail high economic costs.
After outlining the existing challenges, the paper goes on to explain the solutions proposed by Radius, which involve using Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) to perform a significant portion of inspections and maintenance tasks on signaling assets that improve on current methods but require compliance with aeronautical standards and regulations besides those existing in the rail environment.
According to the paper, the major benefits provided by UAS in inspection and maintenance activities are:
- Overcome many of the limitations in inspection and maintenance of signaling assets.
- Contribute to the digitalisation of the railway sector
- Replace most of the human maintenance and visual inspection activities.
- Increase the safety of the maintenance operations by requiring fewer people in the field.
- Reduce the complexity and the cost of maintenance activities using autonomous systems
Visit the Transport Research Procedia website to read the full article and download it.