The Development of a Railway Route Crack Detection System Using an Arduino and an Ultrasonic Sensor

The development of a railway route crack detection system using an Arduino and an ultrasonic sensor was based on the forms of railway tracks that exist today. The problem statement arises from the rising of train incidents that are caused by cracks and obstacles that obstruct along the railway route. Thus, this may result in significant losses of people's huge losses to the people’s lives and property. Through the development of technology, the existing railway route crack detection system is available only at selected countries due to its expensive cost of production. To reduce train incidents, the installation of a railway route crack detection system is essential. The approach of railway crack detection system is by using two sensors which are an ultrasonic sensors to detect crack and an infrared sensor to identify any obstacle that blocks the railway track such as in KTM train area. The ultrasonic and infrared sensors are then integrated with an Arduino itself and send messages to the maintenance team with the aid of GPS and GSM module so that the maintenance could fix it faster. As the result of implementing railway route crack detection system, the inspection robot was successfully developed that is equipped with all the sensors to identify any defects on the railroad. The accuracy of the ultrasonic sensor to detect crack was recorded at 66.67% for the left side and 83.33% for the right side of inspection robot. When the inspection robot identified a crack or obstacle on the railway track, a message is sent to the control room as the monitoring system that is comprised in the development of the railway route crack detection system. Last but not least, all the characteristics associated with this system serve to quantify and direct the optimal possibilities. For future recommendations, next researcher may use better specification for GPS antenna to track the location of defects.