scholarly journals A New Approach for Inspection of Selected Geometric Parameters of a Railway Track Using Image-Based Point Clouds

Sensors ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 791 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Gabara ◽  
Piotr Sawicki

The image based point clouds generated from multiple different oriented photos enable 3D object reconstruction in a variety spectrum of close range applications. The paper presents the results of testing the accuracy the image based point clouds generated in disadvantageous conditions of digital photogrammetric data processing. The subject of the study was a long shaped object, i.e. the horizontal and rectilinear section of the railway track. DSLR Nikon D5100 camera, 16MP, equipped with the zoom lens (f = 18 ÷ 55mm), was used to acquire the block of terrestrial convergent and very oblique photos at different scales, with the full longitudinal overlap. The point clouds generated from digital images, automatic determination of the interior orientation parameters, the spatial orientation of photos and 3D distribution of discrete points were obtained using the successively tested software: RealityCapture, Photoscan, VisualSFM+SURE and iWitness+SURE. The dense point clouds of the test object generated with the use of RealityCapture and PhotoScan applications were filtered using MeshLab application. The geometric parameters of test object were determined by means of CloudCompare software. The image based dense point clouds allow, in the case of disadvantageous conditions of photogrammetric digital data processing, to determine the geometric parameters of a close range elongated object with the high accuracy (mXYZ < 1 mm).


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (7) ◽  
pp. 2263
Author(s):  
Haileleol Tibebu ◽  
Jamie Roche ◽  
Varuna De Silva ◽  
Ahmet Kondoz

Creating an accurate awareness of the environment using laser scanners is a major challenge in robotics and auto industries. LiDAR (light detection and ranging) is a powerful laser scanner that provides a detailed map of the environment. However, efficient and accurate mapping of the environment is yet to be obtained, as most modern environments contain glass, which is invisible to LiDAR. In this paper, a method to effectively detect and localise glass using LiDAR sensors is proposed. This new approach is based on the variation of range measurements between neighbouring point clouds, using a two-step filter. The first filter examines the change in the standard deviation of neighbouring clouds. The second filter uses a change in distance and intensity between neighbouring pules to refine the results from the first filter and estimate the glass profile width before updating the cartesian coordinate and range measurement by the instrument. Test results demonstrate the detection and localisation of glass and the elimination of errors caused by glass in occupancy grid maps. This novel method detects frameless glass from a long range and does not depend on intensity peak with an accuracy of 96.2%.


Author(s):  
M. Corongiu ◽  
A. Masiero ◽  
G. Tucci

Abstract. Nowadays, mobile mapping systems are widely used to quickly collect reliable geospatial information of relatively large areas: thanks to such characteristics, the number of applications and fields exploiting their usage is continuously increasing. Among such possible applications, mobile mapping systems have been recently considered also by railway system managers to quickly produce and update a database of the geospatial features of such system, also called assets. Despite several vehicles, devices and acquisition methods can be considered for the data collection of the railway system, the predominant one is probably that based on the use of a mobile mapping system mounted on a train, which moves all along the railway tracks, enabling the 3D reproduction of the entire railway track area.Given the large amount of data collected by such mobile mapping, automatic procedures have to be used to speed up the process of extracting the spatial information of interest, i.e. assets positions and characteristics.This paper considers the problem of extracting such information for what concerns cantilever and portal masts, by exploiting a mixed approach. First, a set of candidate areas are extracted and pre-processed by considering certain of their geometric characteristics, mainly extracted by using eigenvalues of the covariance matrix of a point neighborhood. Then, a 3D modified Fisher vector-deep learning neural net is used to classify the candidates. Tests on such approach are conducted in two areas of the Italian railway system.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (24) ◽  
pp. 2929 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rong Zou ◽  
Xiaoyun Fan ◽  
Chuang Qian ◽  
Wenfang Ye ◽  
Peng Zhao ◽  
...  

The precision of railway map is becoming a significant issue for autonomous train scheduling, monitoring and maintenance, related location-based service (LBS), and further ensuring travel safety. Mobile 3D laser scanning is an efficient method for making relative high-precision railway track maps, particularly during the night period of railway maintenance, for light detection and ranging (LiDAR) can work without ambient light. In this paper, we propose an efficient and accurate railway track vectorization method based on the LiDAR point clouds from the self-built train Mobile Laser Scanning (MLS) system. Our method takes full use of railway track geometry and reflection intensity feature of LiDAR, without any trajectory prior information. Firstly, clear track points are filtered by intensity; then, a K-means clustering fused Region-Grow Fitting algorithm is applied. It can not only extract the line vector of railway track, but also can tell the track branches apart, especially on bends and turnout. Experiments were carried on using point clouds with an average density of 490 points per square meter. The experimental results show that the method not only can quickly extract linear objects such as railway track and catenary, but also can detect the railways even in complex real-world topologies such as at bends and turnouts. The precision of the detection area in bends and turnouts are 90.32% and 81.31% respectively, the sensitivity is 83.27% and 83.33%, respectively. Moreover, it can identify the track networks.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 (6) ◽  
pp. 14-25
Author(s):  
Władysław Koc

The paper deals with a new approach relating to the design of the region of railway track direction alteration adapted to Mobile Satellite Measurements technique. The method may be particularly useful in situations when both the straights of the route directions cannot be connected in an elementary way using a circular arc with transition curves; this also refers to the application of a compound curve. Thus the only solution becomes the application of two circular arcs of opposite curvature signs to the geometric system, i.e. the use of an inverse curve. The solution of the design problem takes advantage of a mathematical notation and concentrates on the determination of universal equations describing the entire geometric system. This is a sequential operation involving successive parts of the system. The presented method has been illustrated by appropriate calculation examples.


Author(s):  
E. Hadaś ◽  
A. Borkowski ◽  
J. Estornell

The estimation of dendrometric parameters has become an important issue for the agricultural planning and management. Since the classical field measurements are time consuming and inefficient, Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) data can be used for this purpose. Point clouds acquired for orchard areas allow to determine orchard structures and geometric parameters of individual trees. In this research we propose an automatic method that allows to determine geometric parameters of individual olive trees using ALS data. The method is based on the α-shape algorithm applied for normalized point clouds. The algorithm returns polygons representing crown shapes. For points located inside each polygon, we select the maximum height and the minimum height and then we estimate the tree height and the crown base height. We use the first two components of the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) as the estimators for crown diameters. The α-shape algorithm requires to define the radius parameter <i>R</i>. In this study we investigated how sensitive are the results to the radius size, by comparing the results obtained with various settings of the R with reference values of estimated parameters from field measurements. Our study area was the olive orchard located in the Castellon Province, Spain. We used a set of ALS data with an average density of 4 points&thinsp;m<sip>&minus;2</sup>. We noticed, that there was a narrow range of the <i>R</i> parameter, from 0.48&thinsp;m to 0.80&thinsp;m, for which all trees were detected and for which we obtained a high correlation coefficient (>&thinsp;0.9) between estimated and measured values. We compared our estimates with field measurements. The RMSE of differences was 0.8&thinsp;m for the tree height, 0.5&thinsp;m for the crown base height, 0.6&thinsp;m and 0.4&thinsp;m for the longest and shorter crown diameter, respectively. The accuracy obtained with the method is thus sufficient for agricultural applications.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 119-129
Author(s):  
Sergey A. Komyagin

The article discusses the main approaches to the aligment of the railway track during repairs and the current maintenance of the track. The principle of smoothing the path using the smoothing method is described, as well as the disadvantages of this method that affect the further operation of the path. The problem of setting the railway track in the design position are identified. The necessity of matching the geometric parameters of the path to the design data is shown. The existing foreign and domestic track alignment systems are presented. Their principle of operation when setting the path to the design position is described. The advantages and disadvantages, if existing methods and systems for railway track alignment are revealed, as well as the possibility of using these systems within the approved existing technology of railway track repair.


Author(s):  
P. Hu ◽  
Y. Liu ◽  
M. Tian ◽  
M. Hou

Abstract. Plane segmentation from the point cloud is an important step in various types of geo-information related to human activities. In this paper, we present a new approach to accurate segment planar primitives simultaneously by transforming it into the best matching issue between the over-segmented super-voxels and the 3D plane models. The super-voxels and its adjacent topological graph are firstly derived from the input point cloud as over-segmented small patches. Such initial 3D plane models are then enriched by fitting centroids of randomly sampled super-voxels, and translating these grouped planar super-voxels by structured scene prior (e.g. orthogonality, parallelism), while the generated adjacent graph will be updated along with planar clustering. To achieve the final super-voxels to planes assignment problem, an energy minimization framework is constructed using the productions of candidate planes, initial super-voxels, and the improved adjacent graph, and optimized to segment multiple consistent planar surfaces in the scenes simultaneously. The proposed algorithms are implemented, and three types of point clouds differing in feature characteristics (e.g. point density, complexity) are mainly tested to validate the efficiency and effectiveness of our segmentation method.


2015 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Władysław Koc

The paper deals with a novelty related to the design of a region for an alternative railway track direction adequate for mobile satellite measurements. The new approach may become particularly useful in the design of the existing track axis control when the determination of both the main track directions becomes impossible. The only solution in that case is to apply to the geometrical system two circular arcs of a different radius, namely, to take advantage of compound curves. In the presented method the design of a new system is carried out by the use of the local system of coordinates. The solution of the design problem is aided by mathematical recording and is based on the determination of some universal equations describing the entire geometrical system. This procedure takes place sequentially involving consecutive parts of the system. The method has been illustrated by an appropriate calculation example.


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