Systems and methods for visualizing and analyzing a rail surface

Inventors

Dick, Matthew • Liu, Zhipeng • Yilma, Samson

Assignees

Ensco Inc

Abstract

A system for analyzing a railroad track comprises a transport device, a camera coupled to the transport device, an electronic display device, a memory device, and one or more processors. The camera is disposed adjacent to a rail of the railroad track and generates image data reproducible as one or more images of at least a portion of a surface of the rail. The processors can produce an image of the rail surface, which includes a plurality of elongated portions. The image is analyzed to identify any defects that exist within each elongated portion of the rail surface. The processors determine a value of a metric for each elongated portion of the rail surface. The metric is associated with the identified defects. The electronic display device displays a graph indicative of the metric for each elongated portion, the image of the rail surface, or both.

Core Innovation

The invention relates to a system for visualizing and quantifying surface damage of a railroad track. The system includes a camera configured to be coupled to a transport device such that the camera is disposed adjacent to a rail and configured to generate image data reproducible as an image of a surface of the rail, while the transport device travels along the railroad track. The generated image data is stored in a memory device and provided to one or more processors for subsequent analysis and display.

The processors divide each first image into a plurality of elongated portions across a width of the surface of the rail, and produce first images corresponding to the elongated portions. For each elongated portion, the processors analyze the elongated portion images to identify one or more defects in the surface of the rail. In another configuration, the processors further divide the image of each elongated portion into a plurality of regions and identify one or more defects within each region.

For each elongated portion, and where applicable for each region within an elongated portion, the processors determine a value of at least one metric associated with the identified defects. The metric includes values such as crack density, average crack angle, average crack width, pitting density, surface damage density, and/or a surface region index, and at least one metric can be a weighted sum of two or more other metrics. The electronic display device displays an image including the elongated portions together with a graph indicative of the metric value(s), and can additionally display a visual marker indicating the value of each of the metrics for one of the elongated portions.

Claims Coverage

The document includes three independent system claims. Across these claims, the inventive features cover camera-based image generation while traveling along a railroad track, segmentation of rail surface images into elongated portions and optionally into regions, defect identification within the segmented areas, computation of defect-associated metrics including an optional weighted-sum metric, and display of the computed metrics using graphs and visual markers tied to the rail surface segmentation and metric values.

Across the independent claims, the system centers on camera-based rail surface image generation while traveling, segmentation of the rail surface image into elongated portions across the rail width and optionally into regions, defect identification within the segmented areas, computation of defect-associated metric values including a weighted-sum metric option, and displaying the resulting image and metric outputs via graphs and, in the multi-metric configuration, visual markers tied to metric values for segmented portions.

Stated Advantages

Documented Applications