Rail Data Localisation

In the context of the CUBAL project (curvature based rail data localization) by the Quantum Technologies business unit in cooperation with Wiener Linien (the Viennese public transport authority) a completely new detection system for track measuring data is being developed, which functions without external infrastructure and is based on the evaluation of the registered rail curvature.

Wiener Linien are the only suburban traffic operator world-wide who are equipped with two track measuring vehicles with the latest laser measuring technology (light cut procedure) in order to regularly examine the condition of their tramway and underground network. In order to map the measured wear data in an infrastructure database, it is necessary to uniquely assign the data to individual line routing elements (location detection). Conventional procedures from the main railway networks require either the network-wide installation of signal generators or are based on GPS, which has limited capabilities in the built urban environment and no capabilities at all in the underground.

The CUBAL project is promoted in the context of the second I2 tender "Intelligent Infrastructure" presented to an international specialized public by the Austrian Ministry of Infrastructure at InnoTrans in Berlin in September, the largest railway trade fair world-wide.

Through CUBAL, a very important customer and research partner could be won: Wiener Linien, in fact, is one of the largest suburban traffic operators in Europe. Wiener Linien are considered in the industry as technology leaders within the area of maintenance management and are the only to have a measuring vehicle designed for grooved tramway rails. This measuring vehicle is to be made available to different suburban traffic operators in the course of servicing contracts.

CUBAL implements a new correlation procedure, developed by the business unit, which is based on the methods of quantum information algorithms and is by far superior to all tested conventional procedures. Already in the very early project stages, location detection results in production quality could be obtained for underground lines.

For the Wiener Linien CUBAL represents the connecting link between the measuring vehicle and the newly developed infrastructure data base and forms a key technology during the introduction of RAMS/LCC-based (reliablilty, availability, maintainability, safety/life cycle cost) maintenance management. In the context of the mc2 initiative (maintenance competence centres) follow-on projects are planned for the network exploration and switch diagnosis themes.

At ARCAWARD 2004 the CUBAL project was awarded 3rd place in the catagory of economy. A follow-on project for the digital recording of tramway lines (LineScan) is already in preparation.