AI to help monitor wear and tear on Swiss rail lines
Over time, cracks can emerge in concrete rail sleepers.
Keystone-SDA
Select your language
Generated with artificial intelligence.
Listening: AI to help monitor wear and tear on Swiss rail lines
The line between the Zermatt ski resort and the town of Brig will be monitored for cracks using artificial intelligence developed by a Lausanne research team.
This content was published on
2 minutes
Keystone-SDA
Deutsch
de
KI soll Risse auf Zermatt-Brig-Bahnstrecke überwachen
Original
The technology will make inspections of train lines more efficient, the Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) said in a press release on Wednesday.
Railway lines are usually checked manually by experts who assess the condition of infrastructure such as walls or concrete sleepers based on pre-defined criteria. However, the EPFL says, this carries the risk of subjective assessments, with inspectors assessing damage differently at different times.
To solve this, researchers trained an AI algorithm to differentiate between images with cracks and those without cracks.
The algorithm can now be fed with images taken over several years of a railroad section and quantify the severity of cracks in the walls and sleepers over time. In a study published in the Automation in Construction scientific journal, the researchers showed that this method of monitoring works.
In the next tests, the technology will be tested on the lines between Zermatt and Brig and between Brig and Disentis, in southern Switzerland. These sections of track contain a number of retaining walls with different shapes and materials, which makes the task very challenging for the algorithm, according to the EPFL.
Adapted from German by DeepL/dos
More
Debate
Hosted by:
Sara Ibrahim
Is artificial intelligence an advantage or a disadvantage for workers?
What is your experience with AI at work? Have you already used it? Has it helped you work better? Or has it caused you more stress, more work or caused you to lose your job? Tell us about your experiences!
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
Popular Stories
More
Foreign affairs
European nations snub Swiss-made weapons over Ukraine restrictions
What do you think Switzerland’s Alain Berset can bring to the Council of Europe?
The former interior minister is to become the first Swiss Secretary General of the Council of Europe – which issues should his five-year term focus on?
Swiss air traffic control upgrade slows tempo for safety reasons
This content was published on
The upgrade of Switzerland’s air traffic control system will take longer than anticipated following a series of malfunctions.
Switzerland remains ‘world’s most innovative country’
This content was published on
Switzerland remains the world's most innovative country, still ahead of Sweden and the US on the WIPO Global Innovation Index.
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.