Railway Fastener Inspection by Real-Time Machine Vision

Aytekin C., REZAEITABAR Y., Dogru S., ULUSOY İ.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS MAN CYBERNETICS-SYSTEMS, vol.45, no.7, pp.1101-1107, 2015 (SCI-Expanded) identifier identifier

  • Publication Type: Article / Article
  • Volume: 45 Issue: 7
  • Publication Date: 2015
  • Doi Number: 10.1109/tsmc.2014.2388435
  • Journal Name: IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS MAN CYBERNETICS-SYSTEMS
  • Journal Indexes: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus
  • Page Numbers: pp.1101-1107
  • Keywords: High-speed laser range finder, railway fastener detection, railway inspection
  • Middle East Technical University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

In this paper, a real-time railway fastener detection system using a high-speed laser range finder camera is presented. First, an extensive analysis of various methods based on pixel-wise and histogram similarities are conducted on a specific railway route. Then, a fusing stage is introduced which combines least correlated approaches also considering the performance upgrade after fusing. Then, the resulting method is tested on a larger database collected from a different railway route. After observing repeated successes, the method is implemented on NI LabVIEW and run real-time with a high-speed 3-D camera placed under a railway carriage designed for railway quality inspection.