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Mumbai’s Bandra Station Becomes High Tech, Installs AI-Based Loco Inspection System
Mumbai’s Bandra Station Becomes High Tech, Installs AI-Based Loco Inspection System

Mumbai’s Bandra Station Becomes High Tech, Installs AI-Based Loco Inspection System

This is a first of its kind AI-system of the Indian railways that will prove helpful to reduce loco failure and improve the overall efficiency of engines.

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Key takeaways

  • Bandra Station has introduced India's first AI-based Loco Inspection System, aiming to enhance engine efficiency and reduce failures.
  • The new system continuously monitors loco equipment, replacing the outdated manual maintenance approach with predictive asset maintenance.
  • Advanced technology, including cameras and LIDARs, facilitates thorough inspections and significantly reduces maintenance costs and time.
  • The AI system inspects various components of the loco, improving safety by raising alarms for necessary interventions.
  • Inspection time has decreased from three hours to just 20 minutes, enhancing locomotive availability and operational efficiency.
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The Western Railway has installed an AI-based Loco Inspection System at Trip Shed, Bandra Terminus, under the Mumbai division on December 18. The AI system will help increase efficiency, enhance maintenance of the loco engines, and improve loco outage.

The existing system is manual, where maintenance is carried out in a periodic manner. With the predictive asset maintenance system, the condition of equipment in locos will be continuously monitored. It can inspect the sides, underframe and roof of the loco train. Some of the checks that the system will measure include the axle box temperatures, detection of hanging parts, loose parts, foreign particles, wheel profile, carbon strip defects, brake block thickness, broken roof insulators, cattle guard defects, and primary spring cracks of the loco. The system will raise alarms for proper intervention during an emergency.

The technology utilises a 3D camera, 2D camera, thermal camera, LIDARs, edge processors, sliding arms, access points, etc. Using this technology also reduces the cost and time of maintenance.

The speed of the AI-based Locomotive Inspection System is 1 metre per minute and the time taken to inspect one loco on a set of parameters by the system is 20 mins, as against 3 hours in manual mode. The newly launched AI-based Locomotive Inspection System has increased pit availability and improved the locomotive outage.

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