Dedicated smart IR barrier for obstacle detection in railways

This work presents an intelligent system, which allows to detect obstacles in railways, based on optical emitters. The sensorial system is based on a barrier of emitters and another of receivers, placed each one of them at one side of the railway. Apart from the disposition of the sensorial system, a codification method of the emission is also presented in order to detect the reception or the non-reception of transmissions between an emitter and a receiver. Obstacle detection is carried out by the lack of the reception in the detectors. A solution is proposed to reduce the number of false alarms related to these systems, by taking advantage of the high redundancy in the measurements. A high reliability under adverse conditions is achieved with the developed system, being possible to detect the presence of obstacles, and to inform about their position.