Measuring systems that detect automatically the degree of wire wear are necessary in order to carry out an ef®cient infrastructure management and maintenance based on the contact wire condition. An automatic inspection system for overhead wires will be described in this paper. This system has been designed by UPM-DIE (Divisio n de Ingenierõ a Electro nica, Escuela Te cnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales, Universidad Polite cnica de Madrid) and funded by RENFE (Spanish National Railway). Currently, the MEDES system is installed and operative in laboratory coaches used by RENFE (Spanish National Railway) and SNCF (French Railway Company). It is based on a computer vision system taking advantage of good re¯ecting characteristics of the wearing track of the overhead wire. The wearing track is illuminated using laser diodes at 810 nm. Charge coupled device (CCD) linear cameras capture the re¯ected light. A brief contact wire wear measuring systems overview will also be presented.
In this paper a system for measuring the wear of the overhead contact wire of the Spanish Railway Network is presented. The system is capable of measuring the cross section of the overhead wire without physical contact at high speed (160 km/h), with a rate of error less than 5 %. In the paper, the main challenges of the problem will be described and the selected solutions presented. The measuring method is based on an artijicial vision system. The system consists of five linear CCD cameras and a processing subsystem based on Transputers. The basic problems of the processing algorithm will also be described. Finally, the current state of the project will be presented and points of possible improvements will be shown.
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