The purpose of this research project is to develop an automated visual inspection/detection system for reliable identification and localization of structural defects in railroad tracks for the Florida Department of Transportation. The automated visual inspection/detection system uses state of the art computer vision and pattern recognition techniques to assess railroad compliance with the Federal Railroad Administration Track Safety Standards. Structural defects will include but not limited to:
Don Harper developed the hardware the self-propelled Hi-Rail vehicle for this research project. As seen in the video below, this mobile platform is a downward facing, high-frame rate image acquisition system which we use to detect the defects mentioned above.