Railway safety is threatened by landslides, falling rocks and trees, floods, collapses of rail lines and load-bearing structures, torrents and other hazards.

ALTPRO is participating in the RIMA Acceleration Programme with the InspectRAIL project. This is a new concept for monitoring dangerous sections of railway lines with autonomous mobile robots. The robots are equipped with various sensors which scan the situation on the spot. This data is automatically sent to the Intelligent Control System (ICS), signalling system, traffic control and maintenance centre. The robots will move through dangerous places along the railway lines on steel cables stretched between the catenary masts and will operate in all weather conditions.

During the time period of Stage 1, the following development progress has been achieved: definition of interfaces with the railway infrastructure subsystem, definition of safety rules, signing of the ethical statement, selection of the robot components (lidar sensor, camera and microcontroller), CAD model design and manufacture of the wire holder for the catenary masts, etc.