Train Image Synthesizing System for Wayside Monitoring
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
In railroad maintenance, high-speed travel and adverse environmental conditions like low illuminance, drizzly rain, and snow hinder the collection of high-quality video images of wayside devices, making analysis challenging.
Innovation Solution
An image synthesizing system using multiple cameras that move along the same route, synthesizes images of the same physical object to improve image quality by extracting and processing images from each camera, applying techniques such as median filtering to remove hindrance factors.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If high-speed travel is used to monitor wayside devices, then productivity is improved, but image quality deteriorates due to insufficient photographing time in inferior environments
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the imaging task into multiple segments by using N cameras positioned at different locations on the train. Each camera captures images from its specific viewpoint, and the synthesizing unit combines these segmented images to create a high-quality composite image, resolving the contradiction between high-speed travel and image quality
Solution Approach 2:
The patent merges images from multiple cameras using a synthesizing unit that applies image processing techniques such as median filtering. This combining process integrates the strengths of multiple images to produce a final image with superior quality, enabling both high-speed monitoring and high image quality
2Measurement precision
If single camera is used to reduce device complexity, then measurement precision is insufficient in inferior environmental conditions
Solution Approach 1:
The imaging function is segmented across N cameras, with each camera contributing specific image data. The synthesizing unit processes these segmented images through extraction and combination operations, achieving superior measurement precision while distributing the complexity across multiple manageable components
Solution Approach 2:
The synthesizing unit serves multiple functions: extracting images from multiple cameras, aligning them based on positional information, applying image processing algorithms, and generating the final composite image. This multi-functionality justifies the added complexity by delivering significantly improved image quality
Data Source
AI summary
An object of the present invention is to improve the image quality of images obtained during travelling even in inferior environmental conditions. A camera 101-1 is mounted in a train 1-1, and a camera 101-2 is mounted in a train 1-2. Each of the camera 101-1 and the camera 101-2 images the same physical object at different times while moving along the same track 5. A processing apparatus 2 generates a synthetic image 7 by synthesizing images related to the same physical object imaged by the cameras 101-1 and 101-2 while moving along the same track 5, and displays the same on a display screen 2A.