Worn Train Rails Get Judged by Laser
[Calango] is a railway technician, and for a school final project created the Rail Wear Surveillance Trolley (RWST) which is a delightfully designed device made mainly from PVC conduit with one job: travel down a segment of train track while shining a green laser onto the rail, and capture camera images. The trolley holds both the laser and the camera at just the right angles for the camera to capture a profile of the rail’s curved surface. The images are sent via Bluetooth to a smartphone for later analysis. Rail wear can be judged by checking how well the profile …read more