Pioneering solutions to the challenge of location and data positioning in rail

Transforming how infrastructure owners and engineers perform maintenance

We are radically improving the safety, efficiency and effectiveness of railway infrastructure monitoring by allowing track engineers to remotely work from operation centres rather than being exposed to risky and difficult working conditions on track.

We are an Edinburgh-based company, founded in 2016, developing pioneering solutions for the rail sector.
Our award-winning solutions have been deployed on the railways of Network Rail, Deutsche Bahn and SBB.

Are you on the right track?

Current train positioning systems, regularly have errors of many metres, especially in GNSS denied areas.

This can mean a track worker being directed to the wrong track or valuable infrastructure data being unusable.

Satellite positioning and inertial navigation just works, doesn’t it?

…if only it was that simple.

Watch our video below to find out why.

RailLoc

Machines With Vision has taken a pioneering approach to the challenge of location and positioning in the rail sector. Approaching the problem from a computer vision perspective, by looking down at the 4-foot, it is possible to provide a unique position using visible features such as ballast structure; and orientation of bolts, cracks and marks on sleepers.

From this, a map of rail track features is created, on which infrastructure monitoring data is positioned, with better than 1m accuracy, all of the time, everywhere on the railway network, in near real-time.

Benefits:

Positional accuracy better than 1m all of the time, and validated to within 30mm nearly all of the time
Works everywhere, including GNSS challenged or denied areas like tunnels and stations
Requires no boots on ballast, no installation or maintenance of the track-based physical infrastructure
Works in near real time (no waiting for the end of shift to start processing)
Simple installation and a small footprint on the vehicle
Gives unambiguous position - the correct track every time

Underpinned by the pioneering RailLoc technology, Fault Navigator is a companion app developed to reduce the number of repeat visits to a site and the time spent finding the location of a fault, and so doing, directly improves the safety of track maintenance engineers and gets boots-off-ballast.

The app directs a track worker to a pre-selected fault precisely, providing visual and audible prompts for directions, significantly reducing the length of section of track that a worker needs to test to find the suspect/defect. This ultimately leads to a more definitive rejection of a suspect or validation of a defect.

Unlike current mobile apps, Fault Navigator doesn’t use the GNSS functionality of the device, this means it works everywhere on the railway and by harnessing RailLoc technology, directs workers to within 30mm of the fault.

Fault Navigator

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Our technology

Unique state-of-the-art sensors capture and process images up to 200km/hr, offering a millimeter-accurate solution with no latency or motion blur.

Our rail industry approved IoT (Internet of Things) positioning sensors are installed on the underside of diagnostic or passenger trains, and the geolocation of any sensor, at any time, is available through our cloud-based software API (Application Programming Interface).

Learn more about our technology

National Rail Awards 2023 ’Safety Achievement of the Year’

In September 2023, Machines With Vision, along with our Class 153 Project partners - Network Rail, Porterbrook, DG8 and One Big Circle, received the award for ‘Safety Achievement of the Year’ for our work on safer switches and crossings, at the National Rail Awards 2023.

The project involved the repurposing of in-service trains and re-fitting them with multiple sensor packages. This award was for work evaluating the use of combined video technology and accurate positioning for office-based Switches & Crossings (S&C) inspection. Even this early work reduced on-track patrols by maintenance engineers by 50%, not only reducing time and cost but getting significant ‘boots off ballast’.

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If you would like to be part of the Machines With Vision story, we would love to hear from you.

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