Automatic method and system for visual inspection of railway infrastructure
AssigneeConsiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche
InventorsArcangelo DISTANTE, Francescomaria MARINO, Pier Luigi MAZZEO, Nassimiliano NITTI, Ettore STELLA
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Abstract
The present invention relates to a visual inspection system and method for the maintenance of infrastructures, in particular railway infrastructures. It is a system able to operate in real time, wholly automatically, for the automatic detection of the presence/absence of characterizing members of the infrastructure itself, for example the coupling locks fastening the rails to the sleepers.
Claims33
Automatic method for infrastructure visual inspection, for detecting characterizing features of the infrastructure itself, comprising the following steps of:
- acquiring images in sequence of subsequent portions of said infrastructure;
- extracting from said acquired images geometrical coordinates of said infrastructure;
- extracting from said acquired images, based upon said geometrical coordinates, sub-images corresponding to provided positions of said characterizing members;
- and
- detecting in said sub-images the presence/absence of said characterizing members.
Method according to wherein said step of extracting sub-images containing said characterizing members, comprises a phase of searching said characterizing members inside each one of said acquired images.
Automatic automatized system of visual inspection of an infrastructure for detecting the characterizing members of the infrastructure itself, comprising an image acquisition unit (2) and a processing unit (3), wherein said processing unit (3) comprises:
- a first sub-unit (4) for extracting geometrical coordinates of said infrastructure from said acquired images;
- a second prediction sub-unit (5) for extracting from said acquired images, based upon said geometrical coordinates, sub-images corresponding to provided positions of said characterizing members;
- and
- a third detection sub-unit (6) apt to determine the presence/absence of said characterizing members in said sub-images.
(canceled)
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.