If
you live in the rail-deprived USA you may not be familiar with
current-collecting pantographs. Effectively, big springs with
conductive strips on the top, these are mounted on the roofs of
trails and trolley-buses where they press against the
current-carrying wire.
Obviously,
if the conductive strip gets damaged or wears beyond a certain point,
electricity ceases to flow to the motor and passengers are, one
presumes, subjected to an annoying wait.
That’s
where the Pantobot comes in. A tantalizingly brief description in
Vision
Systems Design
led me to the website of manufacturer Henesis.
The technical details are in Italian, in which I lack fluency, but
the pictures are good.
Basically,
the system consists of cameras that snap pictures of the pantographs,
even when the train is in motion, and some kind of expert system that
alerts a reviewer to when a strip needs checking. Interestingly,
Henesis describe this as a “Web Service”, which I imagine means
the images are saved in the cloud and can be pulled down by anyone
who wants or needs to see them.
More
details would be interesting, so if you’re reading this Andy Wilson
…
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