Automated, Drone-Based Grade Crossing Inspection

There is a need and opportunity for an easily deployable, flexible, high-resolution system that can increase the speed, safety, and ease of evaluating grade crossings wherever they are found. Advancements in the capabilities of unmanned aerial systems (UAS or “drones”), combined with more flexible flight rules from the Federal Aviation Administration have been enabling more widespread testing and deployment of UAS for a variety of applications, including civil infrastructure inspection. This project is proposing evaluation and demonstration of a cost-effective UAS-based photogrammetry-enabled inspection system that would create detailed digital surface models useful for enabling automated grade crossing assessments. By comparing 3D data generation capabilities to governmental and industry design guidelines and recommendations, the project is designed to yield the needed proof-of-concept prototype UAS-based system. The system will include demonstrations of applying new and existing geospatial software tools to test and evaluate automated assessment capabilities. Included will be demonstrations of the ability of UAS-based photogrammetry to determine grade crossing profile’s slope and rate of change, determining visual sight lines, and detecting railway infrastructure on an automated basis. A final technical report will summarize the system and include a work plan for Phase II that will lead to a pre-production prototype ready for commercialization.