Joining sensor systems for railway vehicle inspection

In today's railway field, a number of stand-alone inspection systems are available and each of them addresses only one particular train fault-state. Our work describes a concept for integration of these systems into a complete "checkpoint" system with regard to the specific application range of railway vehicle inspection. In contrast to single fault-state detection systems, our concept of an overall system allows us to combine sensor information and to evaluate train fault-states from a more global view. Hence, it provides an abstract data representation for establishing a common data base. To achieve enhanced information combining sensor data of asynchronously working sensor systems, a tight association between measurements and their particular measurement ranges on the train is an elementary functionality. As a crucial aspect, the accuracy of train fault estimation can be proved by this system. Furthermore, the ability of the overall system in characterizing fault-states is discussed in detail.