Case Studies

Meitetsu EI Engineer, Toyota Systems and Toho Denki Industry built an AI camera system that watches railroad crossings for Nagoya Railroad. It runs on the DX-U2200 edge AI computer and is deployed at nine crossings with no major issues.

Overview

Meitetsu EI Engineer Co., Ltd. installs equipment and develops communication systems for Nagoya Railroad (Meitetsu) and other nearby railways. It formed a project team with Toyota Systems, experienced in AI image analysis, and railway equipment maker Toho Denki Industry to build a crossing monitoring system based on AI image analysis, running on Contec’s DX-U2200.

Challenge

Nagoya Railroad operates about 1,000 crossings. Laser obstacle detectors reliably spot large objects such as cars but struggle to detect people, and crossing layouts vary so much that not every crossing has one. 3D LiDAR detects people better but is extremely expensive. The railroad needed an affordable option for many crossings and wanted AI to catch people entering the tracks, which the previous system missed.

Solution

Training the AI was one of the hardest tasks because crossings look so different. The team supplied as much data as possible and retrained whenever false positives occurred until accuracy reached its target. The partners also defined safety protocols: how to respond to unusual events and how to work with existing status monitoring equipment.

The system is positioned as a “safety support device” rather than a full safety device, which keeps deployment costs down so it can be installed at more crossings.

The AI was developed on an NVIDIA Jetson evaluation kit, so production needed a Jetson-based edge AI computer. With several companies involved, the team preferred domestic products. Meitetsu EI Engineer already trusted Contec’s performance and support from another monitoring system, needed digital I/O to connect its systems, and chose the DX-U2200 because it met current specifications and allows future expansion.

Results

The system is deployed at nine Nagoya Railroad crossings with no major issues. It detects unusual events and can change traffic signals and stop trains when it sees a potential accident, so stability is essential; the team reports it runs more stably than it did on the evaluation kit.

Next steps include reaching the target number of installations, using image analysis to reduce manual crossing inspections, and tracking traffic volume at different times of day.

Contec products used

• Industrial Edge AI Computer DX-U2200 · View on our store

Originally published by Contec Co., Ltd. at contec.com.