Use the unmanned aerial surveillance of the railway

On November 5, the French National Railways (SNCF) announced the first launch of the unmanned aircraft system to inspect the country's rail network.

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The unmanned aerial vehicle will be tasked with examining railway infrastructure and cable routing in the Garde and Vaucluse route. If this engine works well, it will be deployed throughout France.

Unmanned aerial photograph of the Paris-Marseille high-speed train passing through the viaduct at Roquemaure - (Photo: 20minutes.fr)

'France is considered the first country in the world to use unmanned aerial vehicles to record train images without interfering with its operations,' said Jean-Jacques Thomas, head of innovation and research. The SNCF, showing off this small but useful engine.

Thomas said that the inspection of the train's work was done only at night when the high-speed train did not cross the road and that the 'working conditions were not simple'.

The relatively small unmanned aerial vehicle is equipped with two under-wing cameras and a digital transmission line that can capture high-quality images. It is controlled and flying at a certain distance and then sends the image directly to the control center.

In addition, unmanned aerial vehicles can monitor the cables hanging from the rails, detect obstacles on the route in bad weather, locate difficult areas ...

According to Thomas, the estimated cost for high-tech manufacturing ranges from a few thousand to millions of euros.