Measurement of Railway Sleepers Spacing Using Mask R-CNN

Railway sleepers are key components that are critical to ensuring safety in the railway track system. Railway sleepers are designed to transfer the load from the rails to the ground during the rail and wheel interaction. This article presents a study to determine the spacing between sleepers. For the detection of sleepers, a model based on Mask R-CNN was developed and used to determine the spaces between sleepers. First, images from the actual railway site were collected by drone and labeled. Next, a model with a Mask R-CNN was built to detect the sleepers. In order to determine the sleepers boundaries, the sum of the pixel density of the binary mask obtained with Mask R-CNN was obtained. Sleepers spans were determined by measuring the distance between the obtained sleepers borders. As a result of the experiment, an accuracy rate of 99.73% was obtained. This work is valuable for detecting sleeper deficiencies and inspecting existing rails, significantly reducing costs compared to traditional methods.

I. Introduction

Rail transport is considered to be one of the safest and cheapest modes of transport frequently used all over the world. The development of high-speed trains in recent years has significantly increased the rate of use of railway transportation. This increase has led to an increase in the importance given to safety. Railway infrastructure suffers greatly due to continuous use, high speeds of trains, changes in weather conditions, lack of maintenance and infrequent inspections. These disturbances can spread gradually and cause major malfunctions in the railway system. A trouble-free railway line is essential for safe transportation. For this reason, early detection of malfunctions that may occur in railway components plays a very important role in terms of transportation safety.