Rail detection using lidar sensors

This article investigates in which way a lidar sensor can be used in a train-borne localization system. The idea is to sense infrastructure elements like rails and turnouts with the lidar sensor and to recognize those objects with a template-matching approach. A requirement analysis for the lidar sensor is presented and a market review based on these requirements is performed. Furthermore, an approach for template matching on lidar scans to recognize infrastructure objects is introduced and its empirical performance is demonstrated based on measurements taken in a light rail environment.

The overall goal of the integration of lidar sensors is to fill the sensory gap of existing train localization approaches, which are able to determine the exact, track-selective train position only if highly accurate position measurements from satellite navigation systems are available, which is often not the case. By integrating a lidar sensor, the localization system becomes more diverse, more robust, and can tolerate missing or faulty measurements from the satellite navigation system.