The Indian Railways has one of the largest railway networks in the world. Comprising more than 7,000 stations, with trains carrying more than eight billion passengers annually, it is the regular mode of transport for the common man. However, stretched over more than 66,000 kilometres, its maintenance takes a lot of effort. The Ministry of Railways has a tough time keeping things functioning smoothly.
Enter Kulandayan C., Lekaraj B. and Rakhesh M., students of S.A. Engineering College, Chennai, who have taken it upon themselves to end Railway’s woes.
The talented trio have developed a robot that monitors railway tracks for cracks and other issues. “Several tracks of the Indian Railways are old and outdated. This results in speed restrictions and can also lead to accidents. We have developed a device which contains a microcontroller that detects cracks using a light sensing module (infrared sensors). Once the crack is detected, its location is sent to authorities of the nearest station via GSM. We have developed an Android application that receives this information as a message along with the location of the problem on Google Maps. Based on this, corrective action can be taken by the authorities,” explains Kulandayan.
Cleaning system
Inspired by the Prime Minister’s Clean India mission, the team has added an additional function to the robot — a brush to clean the tracks. Attached at the front, it will help clean up plastic covers, dust and nitrogenous waste, among other things. “Since our demo model is a miniature one, we have used a brush. The actual model will feature a vacuum pump at the front and Dettol spray at the back to keep railway tracks clean,” says Lekaraj.
The trio plan to take their project forward by making use of Zigbee or the Internet to enable the bot to detect cracks even from remote locations. “ZigBee devices can transmit data over long distances by passing it through a mesh network of intermediate devices to reach more distant ones,” elucidates Rakhesh.
The team has presented their bot at the Institute for Engineering Research and Publication (IFERP) and their paper was published on IFERP’s website. They have also applied for a copyright of their model and are seeking their college’s support for presenting it to the Railways.
Watch the robot in action at https://youtu.be/DAgglb2m0cM
