User Needs for the Development of New Methodologies and R&D Tools for Building a Railway Digital Map and for the Experimental Performance Evaluation of On-Board Subsystems

Kurzfassung

Novel signalling systems are expected to use Digital Maps to implement Automatic Train Operation (ATO) functions or to augment technologies such as European Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), inertial sensors or optical sensors for localization purposes. However, the construction of a Digital Map requires with current technologies expensive railway surveying campaigns. Additionally, the cost for their maintenance and update is a major challenge that prevents its adoption. With regard to the evolution of Control-Command and Signalling (CCS) systems, a new verification infrastructure is also needed to characterize new on-board solutions in terms of train position, speed and acceleration errors, as well as to assess their expected performance. Our research, on one side, aims to develop a methodology and related toolset for executing railway surveying, building and maintaining Digital Maps based on the post-processing of data recorded by trains in commercial service, equipped with COTS sensors like GNSS receivers, cameras, IMUs, and LIDARs. On the other side, a similar approach and development can be used to provide high precision and high accuracy ground truth reference data as true values for carrying out error and performance analysis. This Ground Truth methodology does not require installation of trackside equipment or modifications to existing trackside signalling systems and a-priori knowledge of track databases. This paper summarizes the main user needs of (1) the use of Digital Maps for signalling subsystems purposes, (2) the availability of innovative Ground Truth sources for performance assessments. These user needs are essential for the future design of such methodologies and toolsets