Position Estimation and gap measurement of a point machine using an electronic device with embedded artificial vision firmware

Abstract

An electronic device based on a microcontroller and an image sensor is designed and developed. The device will be used in the railway sector to monitor the current position of a point machine and the gap between two mechanical parts inside it. It has to improve and resolve some issues of other devices in the market that perform the same task but with different technologies. Embedded firmware for the device has been developed to process images to estimate the position of the point machine and the above mentioned gap. The device will transmit the information and, eventually, images to a central server which stores the information of all devices in the system. Accuracy and precision of the measurements are presented. We will also compare the measures between the new device and the previous one to validate the improvement.