Efficient and safe railway operations require regular inspections of the tracks and peripheral equipment. However, manual inspection of the railway infrastructure is time-consuming and cost-intensive. Multi-sensor systems support manual inspection, but analysing and processing these extensive 3D data sets is tedious and inefficient. An automated data processing pipeline that converts measurement data into decision-supporting information is urgently needed. 

With the ARIME funding project, NEXTRAIL and four european project partners EVOLIT (AT), Fraunhofer IPM (DE), IVM (IT) and MACOMI (NL) will develop an automated inspection and validation system for railway infrastructure. Objects in and around the track are to be automatically recognised and their position determined, e.g. Eurobalises, signals, points and track courses. The current manual inspection process is to be automated and accelerated as a result. One focus is on the development of a data processing pipeline that recognises ETCS-relevant objects automatically and in real time in 3D point clouds and compares them with existing planning and project data. Software is being developed to quickly analyse and check recorded ETCS data during acceptance runs. 

As part of further development activities, NEXTRAIL and IVM carried out recording runs on the ETCS test infrastructure in Scheibenberg in June 2025. The project partners now have access to precise 3D point cloud data, real ETCS telegrams and highly accurate vibration data from the tracks.