Condition Monitoring of H e avy-Axl e Load Rail c ar Stru
1 Railroad Engineering Program, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Newmark Civil Engineering Laboratory 205 N. Mathews Ave., Urbana IL, 61801 USA 2 School of EECS, Oregon State University, Kelly Engineering Center, Corvallis OR, 97331 USA 3 Department of E lectrical and Computer Engineering, Computer Vision and Robotics Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, 405 N. Mathews Ave., Urbana IL, 61801 USA
Machine Vision Using Multi-Spectral Imaging for Undercarriage Inspection of Railroad Equipment
Locomotive and rolling stock condition is an important element of railway safety, reliability, and service quality. Traditionally, railroads have monitored equipment condition by conducting regular inspections. Over the past several decades, certain inspection tasks have been automated using technologies that have reduced the cost and increased the effectiveness of the inspection. However, the inspection of most aspects of railroad equipment undercarriages is conducted manually. This is a labor-intensive process and often requires that railroad equipment be taken out of service so that the inspection can be conducted on specially equipped pit tracks. Machine vision technology offers the potential to quickly and automatically monitor, assess, record, and transmit detailed information regarding the condition of railroad equipment undercarriages and components. Multi-spectral imaging (e.g. visible and infrared range) allows recording of both physical and thermal condition and correlation between the two. This allows precise comparison of any undercarriage component or element of interest using templates, and/or references to previously recorded inspections, of the same or similar equipment and enables other analyses such as trending of component wear and detection of progressive increases in component heating over time. Multi-spectrum machine vision algorithms can determine if a component is outside its normal operating range and if anomalies are correlated across different spectra. The inspection tasks of particular interest for this investigation include disc brake condition, bearing performance, and detection of incipient failure of electrical systems such as locomotive traction motors and air conditioning units. We are also investigating detection of damaged or missing components and foreign objects.
Livestock Aspects of Feed Grain Policy
It is a signal event that our topic should be included on this program. In recent years, the livestock and poultry economy has scarcely been considered in the making of price and income policy for feed grains. It has been disregarded by pragmatic policy makers. It has been almost equally bypassed by theoretical economists, who usually kibitz freely. Policy for support and target prices for corn, grain sorghums, and other feed grains has been made with an eye almost exclusively fixed on the producers of those crops. The target price has been set relatively high in order to protect crop farmers' income. The latest (and current) loan rate policy has been to hold the rate low. Although a low rate facilitates moving grain into livestock and poultry consumption when crops are abundant, it does nothing to provide buffer stocks for years when crops are short. In addition, a couple of years ago it became administrative policy to dispose of the stocks inherited from an earlier period, even subsidizing their sale abroad. But the foremost example of one-sidedness is the attitude toward release prices. In all the rhetoric heard recently about the peril of holding corn or sorghums in reserve, the scold has been that release prices would not be set high enough. What group can the spokesmen have had in mind? Feed producers, of course! Not feed consumers, that is, livestock and poultry men. It has been a one-sided consideration of a two-sided issue. If all groups are to have equal voice in policy making, how can livestock and poultry interests be so ostracized? The one-sidedness has more impact now that so much livestock and poultry production has become detached from feed supply on individual farms. The livestock-poultry economy is therefore more sensitive to the availability and price of feed. It is in fact a contradiction that historically, livestock and poultry got more attention when they were still closely connected with feed production on the farm. In the early years of farm programs, the "ever-normal granary" was consciously designed to level out the supply and price of feed for livestock and poultry. Now that livestock and poultry have become more commercial and more vulnerable to a volatile feed situation, feed price stabilization has been progressively removed from the councils of farm policy. And the ultimate contradiction is that the alleged price-depressing perils of a feed reserve have been proclaimed in disregard of the fact that the main defense of feed grain producers' incomes is the target price-direct payment mechanism, not support prices. If grains on reserve should cause market prices to be reduced below target level, producers would get bigger direct payments, that is, producers with a base on their farm are protected in that way. Admittedly, production outside such a base would not be eligible for payment.