Racking Up an Extensive Track Record in Rail Applications

For more than 10 years, iXblue inertial units have been used in railway measurement and maintenance applications to ensure the accurate geo-referencing of track images obtained by lidars and cameras (digital track twins). This is the case for the Belgian infrastructure manager INFRABEL and for the company GEOSAT.

“One of GEOSAT’s core businesses is the generation of digital twins of railway networks for our clients. The principle is based on LIDAR and cameras whose images are georeferenced and then assembled in the laboratory. The diabolical accuracy of 5 cm absolute is required and perfectly achieved thanks to the performance of the iXblue onboard unit and the APPS replay tools. In addition to its excellent  performance, the iXblue suite of products for survey-mapping is also very easy to use and install.” says Cédrick Fererro, Director of GEOSAT.

These inertial units are also used as speed and position references for any system under development; this was the case with ALSTOM for the development of their radar-free secure odometer.

“The first tests began in the summer of 2019 on several types of trains in Norway. We particularly appreciated iXblue’s strong reactivity, support, and training of ALSTOM’s engineering and validation teams. No major difficulties were encountered with this product and in case of problems we could always count on iXblue’s very proactive support. We particularly appreciated its easy installation and its great reliability (2 years of campaign without any defect). The iXblue units are always operational to date even in environments that are a little more disturbed than the nominal environment. The APPS data post-processing tool is very appreciated.” says Marc Berger, System Architect at ALSTOM Charleroi.

For some of these applications, the iXblue inertial navigation system deployed is the Atlans A7. This unit is composed of a small inertial triad with three 50 cm diameter iXblue fiber optic gyros (FOG) and three MEMS COTS accelerometers. It perfectly meets the expected orientation and georeferencing technical performances.

It is, moreover, manufactured in large series and deployed for many applications (maritime, naval, military and civil land).

From 2019, the LOC4RAIL project has enabled the use of this inertial unit for train geolocation. This project is supported by the French Ministry of Ecology and Sustainable Development, ADEME.

It has enabled iXblue, the project leader, to develop a train geolocation rack, the Atlans-R7, using its own R&D funds. This rack is currently deployed on board SNCF passenger trains (Z2N – transilien line RER-C and RER-D and train 508 TGV) in order to qualify this product in a representative operating environment. The iXblue Atlans R7 product is a precise geolocation system integrating the Atlans A7 inertial unit.