Scanning railways

Please post any tips or advice you have in general relating to laser scanning either whilst onsite or office based.
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MalteHC
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Scanning railways

Post by MalteHC »

Hi guys

I am in the starting process of planning a project.
The project is about finding a automatic way of calculating if there is to many or few chippings between the rail lines.
The data is collected with a scanner, and is orientated. So the only worries is how to calculate the chippings.
But what is nagging me, is that there isn't a real point zero to calculate the surface model from. My first thoughts is to make a triangular surface model and somehow use the rail lines as a point of zero. But i can't figure out how to extract the rail lines from the rest of the scanning? Even more, the chip pings kind of floats into the outside grass, so i have to figure out a method, how to calculate an outline of the railways triangular surface model.

I am thinking of selecting the rail lines, by somehow use a sort of polynomial?

But i can't figure out how to calculate an outline.

Does anyone have some experience or an idea, that can help to solve some of my problems?
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Re: Scanning railways

Post by richard_m »

Hi,

it is normal to relate all measurements to the theoretical centreline between the 2 rails. We've been busy with R&D in this area for a while, I cannot say much unfortunately because:

1 - this is sensitive i.p. for us
2 - I'm too stupid to reliably know

Be aware though, if this is a research project we are already doing this commercially..

http://www.fugro.nl/related/brochures-p ... ailmap.pdf

Regards

Richard
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Re: Scanning railways

Post by MalteHC »

Thanks for your reply. But it still leaves me asking, how i can define the two rail lines and how is it possible to define an outliner?
although it is a research project and i know that a lot of companies can provide this service, but unfortually the math in their software is a black box and i need to know all this basics, to research further into this area.
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Re: Scanning railways

Post by Martin_au »

MalteHC wrote:Hi guys

I am in the starting process of planning a project.
The project is about finding a automatic way of calculating if there is to many or few chippings between the rail lines.
The data is collected with a scanner, and is orientated. So the only worries is how to calculate the chippings.
But what is nagging me, is that there isn't a real point zero to calculate the surface model from. My first thoughts is to make a triangular surface model and somehow use the rail lines as a point of zero. But i can't figure out how to extract the rail lines from the rest of the scanning? Even more, the chip pings kind of floats into the outside grass, so i have to figure out a method, how to calculate an outline of the railways triangular surface model.

I am thinking of selecting the rail lines, by somehow use a sort of polynomial?

But i can't figure out how to calculate an outline.

Does anyone have some experience or an idea, that can help to solve some of my problems?
Maybe use the highest points (filter them) to define the rail lines, and also, therefore, extents of the chipping analysis.
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Re: Scanning railways

Post by ucab127 »

I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for/how helpful this will be for you but there's an academic paper from an ISPRS conference on the automatic extraction of rail track (generic) using various algorithms based on the height of the rail to segment it from the rest of the point cloud from mobile scanning. It references a couple of MSc dissertations which are worth reading if you want to understand more about the extraction process:

http://www.isprs-ann-photogramm-remote- ... 3-2013.pdf
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Re: Scanning railways

Post by MalteHC »

mjankor wrote:
MalteHC wrote:Hi guys

I am in the starting process of planning a project.
The project is about finding a automatic way of calculating if there is to many or few chippings between the rail lines.
The data is collected with a scanner, and is orientated. So the only worries is how to calculate the chippings.
But what is nagging me, is that there isn't a real point zero to calculate the surface model from. My first thoughts is to make a triangular surface model and somehow use the rail lines as a point of zero. But i can't figure out how to extract the rail lines from the rest of the scanning? Even more, the chip pings kind of floats into the outside grass, so i have to figure out a method, how to calculate an outline of the railways triangular surface model.

I am thinking of selecting the rail lines, by somehow use a sort of polynomial?

But i can't figure out how to calculate an outline.

Does anyone have some experience or an idea, that can help to solve some of my problems?
Maybe use the highest points (filter them) to define the rail lines, and also, therefore, extents of the chipping analysis.

Thanks, i think this idea is worth investigating further into.
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Re: Scanning railways

Post by Jennifer L. »

Hi,
3DReshaper Application has a plugin which allows to write Scripts in order to run automatic processing and also to write your own process.
A Script extracting automatically the railways from point clouds has been written with 3DReshaper for a French company working for French railroad.
http://www.3dreshaper.com/en1/En_script.htm
Unfortunately, it is not possible to find more "public" information on the internet. So if you are interested, please contact us and we will be able to show you a demo of a basic script extracting rails. We can't give you the code itself, of course.
Jennifer
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Re: Scanning railways

Post by richard_m »

Probably worth remembering that each country only has a handful of types of rails and accurate profile diagrams of these are readily available. Normally you can read the type of rails from a code cast onto the side but of course in reality you can't stop a "scanning train" on live rails to have a look, for academic purposes you can probably assume the type of rails is known. Even if not the scan data simply needs fitting to a "parts table" containing the profiles of the rail types in order to ID the type and then it should be realitively easy to "follow" the rail in the data. This will allow you to ascertain the geometry of the rails and reduce this to the theoretical track centreline. A few mm of wear is likely on the rails but if its only the ballast bed you're interested then you have a couple of cm to play with.

I'm assuming you have existing data and scanned from above the track.
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Re: Scanning railways

Post by danielgadowski »

Hi there,
i'll throw my two cents here as a person who actually works on track.
1. I would aproach such project with a trolley kinematic scanning system in mind (Amberg GRP5000).
2. The trolley would measure your track, the scanner would pick up your balast.
3. Extract profiles from your data set. These will have the track rinning edhes on them plus a profile through the scan.
4. Use the known offsets from your running edges to get your "sleepers base surface".
5. Use the profiles to create the second surface
6. Calculate the volume.
I hope this helps.
Daniel
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Re: Scanning railways

Post by richard_m »

Malte,

I assumed you were working from existing scan data, if not how is the track scanned? From a vehicle/train or trolley or from static scans on the trackside etc?

Richard.
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