PURPOSE

 

Railway crossings degrade significantly faster than plain line track, with lifespans commonly lasting less than 5 years despite their design lives typically being 15 years. This results in Billions of Euros being spent on unplanned corrective maintenance, crossing renewals and delay-minutes, which would not occur if they could be better managed to reach their design lives.

Thus, XCROSS will develop a suite of integrated disruptive technologies which combine to provide a technological process for the monitoring, inspection and intervention of crossing surface profiles. This will result in a step-change in both the cost and quality of railway crossing maintenance.

PROJECT AT A GLANCE

 

Co-funded by the European Union through the Europe's Rail Joint Undertaking research and innovation programme, XCROSS - The next generation of railway crossing asset management technology  aims at a step-change in both the cost and quality of railway crossing through the use of technologies such as Augmented Reality, Digital Twin, 3D laser scanning and 3D printing.

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THE OBJECTIVES

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 Objective 1

To significantly reduce lifecycle costs by minimising the number and scope of maintenance interventions performed on crossings. This will be achieved by using data methods to improve the quality control of interventions. 

Objective 2

To significantly reduce in-service disruptions (e.g. delay minutes) due to fewer actionable track crossing surface defects and associated failures. This will be achieved by developing new lightweight 3D scanning procedures and computer vision algorithms for crossing inspection.

Objective 3

To extend the lifespan of crossings by providing maintainers with data-driven tools to guide maintenance and ensure quality. This will be achieved through an augmented reality app that projects a heatmap overlay on-site and a 3D printed visualization tool.

Objective 4

To provide infrastructure managers for the first time with a data-driven, low-cost path to the implementation of preventative maintenance at crossings. This will be achievable using a high-precision AR heatmap overlay which will provide grinders will unique information needed to accurately perform shallow preventative grinding on a crossing.

Objective 5

Significantly reducing crossing asset inspection time compared to traditional visual methods. This will be achieved by developing new lightweight 3D scanning procedures for crossing inspection.

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TXT ROLE

 

Within the consortium, TXT leads the activities related to the AR profile visualisation tools. This includes:

 
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Drafting of technical specifications and design of the advanced HMI/AR application to assist asset management quality assurance
 
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Integration of the advanced
HMI/AR application with 3D
scanning and digital twin
 
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Production of the prototype
for inspection and repair

PARTNERS

PROJECT KEY INFORMATION

 

Project Number: 101178744

Project Duration: 30 months

Start Date: 1 October 2024

End Date: 31 March 2027

Funding entity: Europe's Rail Joint Undertaking (HORIZON JU Research and Innovation Actions)

Project Budget: € 2.037.787,70

Project official website: https://xcross-rail.eu/

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Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union . Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

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