Safety Trackside worker safety is one of the leading safety concerns around the world. Workers are constantly exposed to risk when working anywhere along a rail line. This held true for a Midwest public subway system operator who looked to GAO for a solution to identify where and when trackside personnel were working and to reduce the risk to them. Using RFID and a peripheral voice alert device, designed and developed by GAO, train operators are notified in real time where work crews are located giving the train operator ample time to implement slowdown and proceed with caution procedures or stop the train. The trackside safety initiative is just one example of how new applications can be rapidly prototyped and deployed. In addition to standard configurations GAO’s team of experienced engineers can design systems to meet specific application requirements. In this case the metro subway operator decided to go one step further and had GAO build into the system further information on the trains and instructions to its operators. The peripheral readers also detect when they are entering a terminal and provide further instruction to the operators such as which doors should be opened, as well, it provides additional general purpose input output (GPIO) controllers extending the RFID reader’s ability to control other devices. GAO has implemented a similar system for a Canadian rail operator in British Columbia in this case allowing them to determine the location of any car within their rail yard.

Rail Speed & Emergency Braking Control Signal System

The system indicates when a rail car is entering restricted and non-restricted speed areas, and monitors speed to apply emergency braking if the rail car exceeds speed restrictions. General Description: This system uses a combination of passive UHF tags, semi-passive UHF tags, and a custom unit containing an RFID reader with General Input Output Ports (GPIO) and a Programmable Logic Controller. In this case, the unit containing the reader is mounted on the rail car and tags with vairious IDs are placed near the track. As the train passes different tag sequences it is able to read the tag IDs and depending on that sequence it generates various IO signals, as well, it is able to moitor the train’s speed. These signals are then sent to the PLC which is able to control the train’s speed and also apply the train’s emergency breaking system if necessary.

We Have Your Solution

From consulting, planning, product choice, software, and support, GAO’s team is able to help you craft a timely solution according to your unique requirements. RFID applications from GAO RFID help help improve revenue, reduce costs and increase worker safety.  Contact us today to see how we can help!]]>