Electrans, a reference company in the field of level crossings protection, has sealed an agreement with Begirale, a DOMINION technology company to incorporate artificial vision in the level crossings.
The alliance of these two companies revolves around begiCROSSING, a system developed by Begirale that allows detecting potentially dangerous situations in level crossings from the analysis of the video signal coming from a camera that supervises the passage. The product is being deployed by ETS, the Basque Railway Infrastructure Administrator, after having undergone rigorous tests on its network for months and after overcoming the very high levels of reliability demanded by the railway industry.
"This alliance seeks to improve safety and reduce incidents in the level crossings of the railway networks in Spain,"
Iñigo Zorriketa
| Director de Begirale
Begirale Controlling Risk, the area of artificial vision of DOMINION, has developed in recent years several innovative products worldwide that allow the automatic detection of risk situations in different railway areas through the use of artificial vision technologies and artificial intelligence.
'Integral' step supervision
One of the differential elements of begiCROSSING is that it allows you to have complete control of what is happening in the level crossing. Normally, the rail infrastructure manager knows what happens with the elements that are part of the protection system of the level crossings (barriers, lights and chimes), but lacks information with regard to the elements external to the crossing, such as vehicles, people, objects or animals.
begiCROSSING allows, however, to keep under control all those elements warning when a risk situation that could suppose a security problem occurs. The system provides visual tests and statistical data of both the problems and the malfunctions in the level crossings. In addition, all risk situations are recorded and that is useful for educational purposes, as well as possible claims.
Another of the great advantages of the solution is that it allows communication with multiple points simultaneously, so that you can send the alarms to the train (through the signalling systems), to the command post (from where you control the rail traffic) or to the nearest station (from where assistance can arrive in less time). In addition, as the information of the alarms is "enriched" with the live video signal of what happens in the crossing, the management of any situation that occurs is greatly facilitated.
In the last Rail Live Bilbao event, the director of Begirale declared that "society demands progress in terms of safety in the railway field and companies and administrations have the responsibility to design and implement improvements; the technologies linked to digitalization provide us with a unique opportunity. "
For this reason, Begirale proposes an innovative approach to increase safety in railway environments, with reduced investments, and complementary to current systems. "Our products have been designed to adapt to the complexity of this environment in the form of a flexible, modular, scalable and integrable solution," explained Iñigo Zorriketa.
