Engineer Q&A: On track with RILA remote surveys

What inspired Fugro to develop RILA?

When Fugro was developing a system for measuring and analysing rail infrastructure, our priority was to design a way of performing track surveys safer, faster, cheaper and with a lower environmental impact than traditional ground survey methods. This led to the train-mounted RILA solution, a system that provides the accuracy and insights of competing solutions while allowing trains to run at regular speed and with no impact on the network capacity.

Can you tell us more about the technology involved – what is it and what exactly does it do?

The system uses integrated laser and imaging systems to measure absolute track position and geometry to engineering specification accuracy while working at line speed (up to 125mph). Laser beams pass over each rail and a camera captures high resolution images of the rail head and rail foot. Tightly integrated onboard GNSS and inertial measurement systems compute the position and orientation of the track, while integrated video can be georeferenced for further analysis.