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Autonomous Aerial Drones Inspection of Railway Track Assets
Challenge
Railway signalling infrastructure has traditionally been inspected through human maintenance activities, dedicated monitoring systems or diagnostic trains. While these approaches remain important, they can involve track occupation, operational constraints and significant resources. European research is therefore advancing automated alternatives, including drone-based inspection and AI-supported asset monitoring.
The solution
The solution is a comprehensive system that enables unmanned autonomous drone flights over the railway track between secure docking and recharging stations for the purpose of signalling infrastructure inspection.
It supports the automated generation of reference orthophotomaps and AI-assisted detection of anomalies, using image segmentation to identify significant appearance or dimensional differences in trackside assets of interest.
The system also enables the preparation of a Digital Twin of the track using acquired and stored visual data.
Readiness for Industrialisation and Deployment
The solution is a prototype tested for a specific market (low-traffic regional line), ready for testing in other operational environments. TRL 7 (full deployment on AZD lines and testing on further non-AZD lines with higher traffic) is foreseen by 2028.
Maturity level
The solution achieves TRL 6 and has been pre-deployed and tested in quasi-operational conditions on the AZD’s track Čížkovice – Obrnice with regular train traffic. Further pilot tests are being conducted on the AZD track Dolní Bousov – Kopidlno with irregular train traffic, which also includes Automatic Train Operation. Digital Twin of the tracks are stored in a production database on a dedicated server, with HTTPS access via a virtual private network.
Expected benefits
The solution reduces the need for human inspection and track possession, increases inspection reliability and makes all collected data and analyses available for repeated inspection. It frees up human capital for other uses on the railway and provides high-quality data for the day-to-day maintenance and for the development of further value added applications. Fully battery-powered UAVs (drones) are becoming a sustainable means of track inspection, even in relatively remote locations.
Who benefits
Infrastructure Managers
Railway operators
Suppliers
Final users
Conclusion
By enabling autonomous, data-driven track inspections, the Europe’s Rail solution supports faster and better-informed decision-making support, while reducing the human and overall costs associated with inspections activities. It also provides a scalable basis for more efficient and reliable railway infrastructure monitoring.
Learn more about the project
FP3-IAM4Rail
This solution has been developed within the EU-Rail Flagship Project FP3-IAM4RAIL. The project FP3-IAM4RAIL focuses on seven different integrated demonstrators for rail assets which are key for research and innovation in the rail sector.