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A multi-camera image processing and visualization system for train safety assessment

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Abstract

In this paper we present a machine vision system to efficiently monitor, analyse and present visual data acquired from a railway overhead gantry equipped with multiple cameras. This solution aims to improve the safety of daily life railway transportation in a two-fold manner: (1) by estimating multiple safety requirements using image analysis algorithms that can process large imagery of trains (2) by helping train safety operators to detect any possible malfunction on a train. The system exploits high-rate visible and thermal cameras that observe a train passing under a railway overhead gantry. The machine vision system is composed of three principal modules: (1) an automatic wagon identification system, recognizing the wagon ID according to the UIC classification of railway coaches; (2) a system for the detection and localization of the pantograph of the train; (3) a temperature monitoring system. These three machine vision modules process batch trains sequences and their resulting analysis are presented to an operator using a multitouch user interface.

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Notes

  1. https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract

  2. This system is composed of three infrared laser mounted on the portal. This is a proprietary solution and cannot be discussed in the scope of this paper.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Integrated Intermodal System for Security and Signaling on Rail (SISSI) project, funded by Regione Toscana (Italy) under the PAR FAS 2007-2013 program (P.I.R. 1.1.B, Action 1.1). We also thank Andrew D. Bagdanov and Iacopo Masi for their support in the project realization.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Media Integration and Communication Center (MICC), University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Giuseppe Lisanti, Daniele Pezzatini & Alberto Del Bimbo

  2. Digital Video and Multimedia Lab (DVMM Lab), Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Svebor Karaman

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  1. Giuseppe Lisanti
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  2. Svebor Karaman
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  3. Daniele Pezzatini
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  4. Alberto Del Bimbo
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Correspondence to Giuseppe Lisanti.

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Lisanti, G., Karaman, S., Pezzatini, D. et al. A multi-camera image processing and visualization system for train safety assessment. Multimed Tools Appl 77, 1583–1604 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-017-4351-4

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