Leveraging UAVs for Rapid and Hierarchical Railway Intrusion Detection

The normalized and rapid intrusion detection of the railway operation environment is of great significance for real-time monitoring and early detection of foreign objects that threaten the railway’s safe operation. The existing manual patrol and inspection vehicles cannot meet the high demands for rapid detection of some occasional or accidental risks in a short period, such as the intrusion of potential or actual foreign objects. Combining railway segmentation and foreign object detection, this paper proposes a two-stage perception model to achieve hierarchical area-matched intrusion detection and advance the risk assessment of the railway operating environment under the wide field of view of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). With the railway area accurately segmented, the hierarchical division of different risk areas and the foreign objects detection in those hierarchical areas is realized. Leveraging the maneuverability and flexibility of UAVs, the proposed two-stage perception model can effectively improve the efficiency and quality of rapid intrusion inspection of the railway line and surrounding environment.