María Jesús Villamide Díaz

Advanced Multisensorial Barrier for Obstacle Detection

In the current railway systems, it is becoming more necessary to have safety elements in order to avoid accidents. One of the causes that can provoke serious accidents is the existence of obstacles in railways, either fixed or mobiles. In this work, a multisensorial system is proposed in order to inform the monitoring system of the existence of obstacle. The use of different sensors for the same task is justified by the high degree of reliability needed in these environments, where the safety is fundamental.

Multi-sensory system for obstacle detection on railways

In the current railway systems, it is becoming more necessary to have safety elements in order to avoid accidents. One of the causes that can provoke serious accidents is the existence of obstacles on the tracks. In this work, a multi-sensory barrier - consisting of infrared (IR) and ultrasonic (US) sensors- and a vision system, is proposed in order to inform the monitoring system of the existence of obstacles. Due to the fact that any sensor has detection problems which are strongly dependent on meteorological conditions, the use of different sensors for the same task is justified so that the drawback of one sensor is compensated for by the others. The high degree of reliability needed in these environments, where the safety is fundamental, recommends the use of a multi-sensory system. Principal components analysis is applied to the data obtain from the barrier and from the vision system. The use of this technique with the barrier permits concluding if there are obstacles on the tracks; and with the vision system information about moving objects is obtained.

Efficient management of an advanced data acquisition system with real time streaming

In this work the specific software tools designed to manage a high performance data acquisition board to be used in active multi-sensory systems is presented. Specifically, the developments which has been carried out allow to monitor the coded emission/reception of two sensory barriers for obstacle detection on railways, based on infrared (IR) and ultrasonic (US) sensors. Additionally, it has been developed the tools to detect the coded emissions. As a result of that, it can be detected the existence of obstacles between both barriers, based on the lack of signal at the receiving barrier. The developed software can be considered the previous step to implement the hardware prototype. Initially it has been validated the feasibility of the algorithm, optimizing the processing time to obtain the detection results in quasi-real time.