Quantum-Systems’ VTOL drones to help maintain Germany’s railway infrastructure

DB Fahrweg­di­en­ste is using Quan­tum-Sys­tems’ Trin­i­ty F90+ VTOL drones for storm dam­age detec­tion and veg­e­ta­tion inspec­tion along its 33,499 km-long net­work of track.

The com­pa­ny is whol­ly-owned sub­sidiary of DB Netz AG, which is respon­si­ble for rail infra­struc­ture ser­vices in Ger­many. To ful­fil the pre­scribed traf­fic safe­ty oblig­a­tion in regards to veg­e­ta­tion, this must be inspect­ed, doc­u­ment­ed and eval­u­at­ed by qual­i­fied per­son­nel at
least once a year along the entire route net­work.

As rail­way traf­fic should not be dis­rupt­ed dur­ing these inspec­tions, check­ing and main­tain­ing the con­stant­ly grow­ing veg­e­ta­tion near the tracks is a time-con­sum­ing and demand­ing task.

But using the ful­ly auto­mat­i­cal­ly oper­at­ed Trin­i­ty F90+ drones, data acqui­si­tion is fast and dig­i­tal, mak­ing it sim­ple to use. The drones fly over pre-defined route sec­tions and take aer­i­al pho­tographs for the reg­u­lar inven­to­ry.

They can also react quick­ly after storms or severe weath­er inci­dents, by record­ing and doc­u­ment­ing the dam­age along the route net­work from the air. And all this is done with­out dis­rup­tion to rail traf­fic.

Matthias Maier, Over­all Project Man­ag­er for Dig­i­tal Remote Sens­ing at DB Fahrweg­di­en­ste GmbH, said: “With the help of future autonomous­ly-oper­at­ed long-range drones from Quan­tum-Sys­tems, we would be able to inspect the tracks dur­ing flight oper­a­tions out of sight (BVLOS) much faster and more effi­cient­ly than with con­ven­tion­al ter­res­tri­al record­ing.

“The high-qual­i­ty and objec­tive record­ing of veg­e­ta­tion and track infra­struc­ture by means of a VTOL drone with all the analy­sis options in data eval­u­a­tion is a real added val­ue for inter­nal tasks.”

Quan­tum-Sys­tems GmbH is sup­port­ing DB Fahrweg­di­en­ste GmbH with new VTOL UAS and sees it as a con­fir­ma­tion of the good coop­er­a­tion with its cus­tomer.

Begin­ning in Sep­tem­ber 2019, both com­pa­nies have been work­ing on the ful­ly auto­mat­ed record­ing of veg­e­ta­tion near the track and storm dam­age along the Deutsche Bahn route net­work with the Trin­i­ty F90+ drones as part of the “FreeRail” project.

The project is fund­ed by the Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istry of Trans­port and Dig­i­tal Infra­struc­ture with­in the frame­work of the Moder­ni­ty Fund (mFUND) fund­ing guide­line. It deals with a dig­i­tal solu­tion for the grow­ing chal­lenges in the main­te­nance of Deutsche Bah­n’s rail­way tracks.

Flo­ri­an Seibel, CEO of Quan­tum-Sys­tems GmbH added: “DB Fahrweg­di­en­ste GmbH is an impor­tant strate­gic cus­tomer and part­ner for us. Our joint research work is focused on data-based dig­i­tal appli­ca­tions to dri­ve tomor­row’s mobil­i­ty. The poten­tial of drones is far from being exhaust­ed in this con­text.

“Sus­tain­able deci­sions are to be made based on data. And it is pre­cise­ly this data that we pro­vide with our drone tech­nol­o­gy. At any time, at any place and in the high­est qual­i­ty.”

After suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of the project and the test phase, Maier added that DB Fahrweg­di­en­ste plans to equip all branch­es with sev­er­al VTOL drones to sup­port the beyond visu­al line of sight oper­a­tions and to train sev­er­al pilots for the mis­sion.

DB Fahrweg­di­en­ste GmbH is a 100% sub­sidiary of DB Netz AG and a reli­able part­ner in sys­tem ser­vices for all aspects of rail­way main­te­nance.

It is a spe­cial­ist in the main­te­nance of veg­e­ta­tion along the entire Ger­man rail net­work and secures track con­struc­tion sites of all kinds with state-of-the-art tech­nol­o­gy, sup­port­ing rail­way projects with the deliv­ery and removal of mate­ri­als.

Across Ger­many, sev­en branch­es with 36 region­al ser­vice divi­sions man­age the main­te­nance of around 60,000 track kilo­me­ters and the secur­ing and sup­ply of more than 100,000 con­struc­tion sites annu­al­ly.