Uav-Based Railway Track Following

Given the pivotal role of the railroad industry in modern transportation and the potential risks associated with track malfunctions, the inspection and maintenance of railroad tracks emerges as a critical concern. Existing solutions rely on large, expensive, and time-consuming platforms that are very accurate, however, they require the line to be blocked during the inspection. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can significantly reduce track downtime and cost while maintaining inspection capabilities. However, current solutions focus on the inspection task while UAVs are programmed to follow predefined paths on the network. This paper presents an autonomous, visionbased track following system that was developed, implemented, and tested onboard a UAV. Notably, this system operates independently of external sensors, such as GPS, thanks to its utilization of advanced computer vision techniques. Two approaches were developed utilizing a forward-facing camera and a downward-facing camera. The experimental results of several field trials show the efficiency of the developed system.