Defect Detection in High-Speed Railway Overhead Contact System: Importance, Challenges, and Methods

High-speed Railway has become an essential part of society, with an increasing demand for safety. Overhead contact system is an important part of the power supply system with wide variety of fasteners. Affected by the natural environment and vibration during train operation, these parts may loosen or fall off. For safety reasons, automatic machine defect detection is required to replace inefficient manual inspection. Due to the complexity of defects and difficulties in data acquisition, defect detection in overhead contact system faces many problems. The lack of defect samples is the most challenging one. With the development of computer vision and popularization of intelligent image processing technology, new algorithms and models provide effective solutions for those problems, which deserve further study.