Friday 11 February 2022

Drone4Rail for Plain Track kick-off meeting held on 3 February

Share this article

The kick-off meeting for the UIC Drone4Rail for Plain Track project was held online on 3 February with 24 participants from Adif, Altametris, DB, Infrabel, IP, NS, MÁV, ProRail, RFI and UIC. The Drone4Rail for Plain Track project is managed by the Track Expert Group within the Rail System Forum. This project involves infrastructure managers (IMs) from all over Europe.

The kick-off meeting was opened by Mercedes Gutiérrez, UIC Senior Advisor in charge of the project. After a brief introduction of all the members attending the meeting, Ms Gutiérrez provided an overview of the project and outlined its preliminary objectives. The Drone4Rail for Plain Track project aims to study and standardise drone use for various applications relating to plain track assessment, improving inspection efficiency. The key outcome will be the definition of a guideline and further IRS development.

Establishing key recommendations on software and hardware issues, as well as data management and analysis, is a further key objective of the project.

Drone4Rail for Plain Track continues the work initiated within the framework of its predecessor project, UIC Drone4Rail, which focused on bridge inspections.

During the meeting, the experts discussed the various questionnaire replies received. The next steps will be scheduled soon with a view to organising the project work packages.

For further information, please contact Mercedes Gutiérrez, UIC Head of Asset Management, Infrastructure and Interfaces with Rolling Stock, at gutierrez@uic.org

5 Votes

Average rating: 5 / 5

Photo 1: Drone being operated during a plain track inspection © Altametris
Photo 2: Raw LIDAR imagery captured by drone