Railroad asset monitoring based on compact asset data

Abstract

A camera on a railroad vehicle captures image data depicting a surrounding environment. An on-board computing system of the railroad vehicle uses image processing operations to identify railroad assets and / or railroad asset subcomponents depicted in the image data. The on-board computing system may evaluate the image data to identify, substantially in real time, defects in the railroad assets and / or subcomponents depicted in the image data. The on-board computing system may also, or alternately, generate compact asset data, such as vectors, splines, and / or polygons, that represents the types, shapes, orientations, and locations of railroad assets and / or subcomponents identified based on the captured image data. Comparison of compact asset data associated with different points in time may identify changes to the shapes, orientations, and locations of the railroad assets and / or subcomponents over time that may be indicative of defects.

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