TY - JOUR T1 - Sensory system for obstacle detection on high-speed lines JF - Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies Y1 - 2009 A1 - J.J. Garcia A1 - Ureña, J. A1 - Manuel Mazo A1 - Felipe Espinosa A1 - Álvaro Hernández A1 - Cristina Losada-Gutiérrez A1 - Ana Jimenez A1 - Carlos De Marzziani A1 - Fernando J. Álvarez A1 - García, Enrique KW - Railway safety; Obstacle detection; Infrared barrier; Efficient encoding scheme; Principal Component Analysis AB - This work presents an intelligent system which allows the detection of obstacles on railways. The sensory system is based on one barrier of infrared emitters and another of receivers, placed on opposing sides of the railway. Obstacle detection is achieved by a lack of reception in the detectors. The efficiency of the system is improved with the geometrical distribution of the sensory system and the encoding used at the emitting and receiving stages. Additionally optimal estimation techniques have been proposed to avoid false alarms, based on Kalman and H∞ filtering. Furthermore, Principal Component Analysis is applied to validate the obstacle detection, and to improve the efficiency of the system. A high reliability under adverse conditions is obtained with the barrier, it now being possible to detect the presence of obstacles, and to report on their position. VL - On-line JO - Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies ER -