Detecting Rails in Images from a Train-Mounted Thermal Camera Using a Convolutional Neural Network

Abstract: Now and then train accidents occur. Collisions between trains and objects such as animals, humans, cars, and fallen trees can result in casualties, severe damage on the train, and delays in the train traffic. Thus, train collisions are a considerable problem with consequences affecting society substantially. The company Termisk Systemteknik AB has on commission by Rindi Solutions AB investigated the possibility to detect anomalies on the railway using a trainmounted thermal imaging camera. Rails are also detected in order to determine if an anomaly is on the rail or not. However, the rail detection method does not work satisfactory at long range. The purpose of this master’s thesis is to improve the previous rail detector at long range by using machine learning, and in particular deep learning and a convolutional neural network. Of interest is also to investigate if there are any advantages using cross-modal transfer learning. A labelled dataset for training and testing was produced manually. Also, a loss function tailored to the particular problem at hand was constructed. The loss function was used both for improving the system during training and evaluate the system’s performance during testing. Finally, eight different approaches were evaluated, each one resulting in a different rail detector. Several of the rail detectors, and in particular all the rail detectors using crossmodal transfer learning, perform better than the previous rail detector. Thus, the new rail detectors show great potential to the rail detection problem.