A typical railcar inspection takes about two minutes for a Canadian National Railway mechanic walking on uneven ground around the tracks, shining a flashlight on a car’s undercarriage to spot defects in need of repair.
The portals are composed of metal arches placed over the tracks equipped with 36 stadium-quality lights and 360-degree cameras that capture continuous imagery of a train as it passes through. The colour, high-resolution images are fed real-time into propriety algorithms that use machine learning to recognize defects. If a problem is spotted, the system flags a car and enables faster maintenance.
CN executives insisted the move isn’t about replacing workers, who will spend more time actually fixing defects rather than spotting them. Rather, they highlighted the dramatic increase in efficiency and reliability that they believe will ultimately improve safety. Still, any changes will result in discussions with labour unions representing their workers across North America.