Rail monitoring
Inertial and gyroscopic sensing applied to rail infrastructure monitoring.
The problem
What this capability is
Track condition is measured today by dedicated inspection vehicles that run on a schedule. Between runs the network is inferred rather than known, and a fault that develops the day after an inspection has until the next one to get worse.
Rail monitoring is the application of inertial and gyroscopic sensing to that gap. An instrument package on a vehicle already running the route records how the vehicle moves, and track geometry can be reconstructed from that motion. The measurement is continuous, it costs nothing extra in vehicle movements, and it improves with every pass.
Quantum inertial sensing matters here because the limit is drift. A conventional IMU / gyro package is accurate over short intervals and loses reference over long ones, which is why the measurement has to be tied back to external position fixes. An inertial reference that drifts far less makes long unaided sections measurable, and makes the difference between two passes over the same stretch of track meaningful rather than lost in the noise.
Applications
Example applications
Applications are examples of what the capability enables, not products.
- IMU / gyro
- Track geometry, ride quality and structural movement reconstructed from the motion of a vehicle that was going to make the trip anyway.