AE-Net: A High Accuracy and Efficient Network for Railway Obstacle Detection Based on Convolution and Transformer

The incursion of railway obstacles poses a serious risk to train operations, and numerous accidents occur during train shunting. However, existing algorithms still struggle with finding a compromise between detection accuracy and speed during train movement. Moreover, their accuracy and robustness are inadequate, specifically when handling small objects in complicated railway scenarios. To overcome these issues, this article proposes an efficient network using convolution and transformer (AE-Net) for performing accurate and real-time detection of railway obstacles to ensure driving safety. First, the enhanced and lightweight transformer module (ETM) is constructed to strengthen the model’s global modeling ability. Then, the lightweight feature integration module (LIM) is presented to integrate multibranch feature information and reduce model complexity. Finally, the reinforced multiscale feature fusion module (RFM) is utilized to enhance the multiscale object detection capability, especially for small obstacles. The presented algorithm realizes 95.29% mAP and 145 frames/s on the railway dataset, which is superior to YOLOv5s. In addition, the experiment on MS COCO further shows that AE-Net can perform a considerably better detection than current state-of-the-art models. Hence, it is practicable to employ AE-Net in actual railway and further more complex multitarget scenarios.

I. Introduction

With the rapid development of rail transport, ever-rising concern about railway safety has grown. Railway safety problems are largely caused by obstructions intruding on tracks [1] and multiple accidents occur during the shunting process of trains [2], [3]. In this mode, train attendants operate traditional manual methods to monitor the driving situation ahead and notify the driver accordingly to prevent danger. However, the driver’s view is easily obscured when the train is moving around curves, and human error and fatigue also increase the likelihood of serious accidents during train shunting [4]. This article focuses on identifying obstacles in shunting mode at train speeds below 45 km/h.