Catch here Rail
to drivers or take decisions. Advantech has spent a lot of time recently working on ATO, Automatic Train Operation, where our computers help drivers to increase passenger safety.
How important is collaboration when creating new technology? Do you work with end-users in the rail industry?
New technology has to come from intense collaboration with train and network operators, train builders, and system providers. In Advantech, we call this Co-creation. Co-creation drives our product development. Often, the most knowledgeable people are the users. In the example I gave above, for ATO, one of our customers, a train operator, needed to use the latest technology to collect the best data for analysis. As a result, our rail product developers had to completely re- engineer one of our products, a rolling stock computer server, to operate the networking at 10Gbps, ten times faster than that available at the time. The customer demanded and we
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delivered. The technology is now available for everybody, just as everybody else starts to demand 10Gbps.
What do you think will be the next big trend in rail products and how are you addressing this future need?
We are already seeing with the reaction to the Coronavirus pandemic that the control of large numbers of people will be a critical factor. Those nations, societies, organisations and enterprises that provide control in an automated and effective way will co-operate better and produce and trade more profitably. Public transport in general and rail in particular, due to the very large numbers and dense concentrations found must succeed in this area.
Technology that can help include artificial intelligence but in particular its application to image and video data. The ability to monitor massive crowds, identify individuals
and check their temperature or whether they are wearing a mask already exists. That technology will become ubiquitous, as well as mobile robotic systems that disinfect rooms, buildings and trains Advantech is already a leader in developing computer systems that allow artificial intelligence algorithms to operate at the edge, whether this is in a train station, trackside or on-board rolling stock. The latest computers include graphical processing units (GPUs) or video processing units (VPUs) that can analyse images from video cameras in real-time. This equipment can serve to monitor machinery like the catenaries, or on a tram, for instance, to monitor pedestrians and other road users. Inside rolling stock, the technology will identify those feverish individuals who may carry a contagious disease, check the availability of seats and see if disabled people in wheelchairs need help to descend at the next stop.
advantech.com
www.cieonline.co.uk
Components in Electronics
June 2020 17
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