Slashdot Mirror
Using GPS To Prevent Train Crashes In India
dave420 writes "The BBC has an article outlining plans in India to use GPS technology to alert train drivers of obstructions on the tracks, automatically stopping the train if the driver fails to take action. This sounds like a good use of cheaply-available technology to provide a safer train network."
Do the boulders have GPS too?
At present, drivers sit on hard wooden seats in cabins where temperatures often soar to an unbearable 56C.
The rest rooms provided for them often have no electricity and they have no recreational facilities.
They will also get cushioned seats in the engine room as well as a walkie-talkie to keep in touch with the station officials.
But it seems like they could have addressed some of these issues incrementally.
But it still won't know when a cow is on the tracks. If the driver is awake, this really shouldn't be necessary.
I could see where this could come in handy! The last thing ANY Indian would want to happen is to hit a cow wandering over the train tracks.
The reason that GPS is not used in the US for trains more is because many times tracks run right next to each other and sometimes trains run on the right and other times on the left. GPS is not accurate enough to tell what track the train is on.
The Indian Programmers Assosication (IPA) is getting worried that some of it's jobs might go overseas to countries that manage GPS satellites.
What happens when the USA turns off or munges GPS information again? Is Europe still considering if they should make a secondary GPS system?
when the human is their to make sure the computer is being alert.
stuff
This is Darl McBride speaking, and we at SCO are deeply grieved to see that Indian trains will, in short time, trample all over SCO's intellectual property.
Our legal team presently is both wearing and writing briefs in response to this outrage, and the Indian government will of course receive a side of "sacred cow" beef.
is bad tracks and bridges, rather than stationary objects on track. The only solution for that is to get rid of the British laid century old tracks and lay new ones.
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
I wonder if this technology will evolve into technology to support automobile travel. There have been many attempts to develop technologies to allow for automated auto travel from laying copper wire for navigation systems to using object sensors in bumpers. Maybe GPS is the way to go! Of course, the BMW's of the world will get it first!
The device can also be used to find stolen or hijacked trains... :)
Having heard countless stories from most of my Indian pals over the years, I'm really curious how much of a difference this GPS plan will make. Sure, it's might be better than the way things are right now, but it seems that the transportation problems are endemic to society and thus not fixable (or even help-able) with something like GPS devices. And this isn't limited to just trains; there are apparently bus accidents all the time, too.
Having not been to India myself, I have to go with my second-hand knowledge and stories I hear, but it pretty much sounds like the Indian economy would never support the kinds of changes required to make mass transit actually safe. I'm interested to hear others' thoughts on this.
The article is a bit lean on how GPS is used and frankly I don't see how GPS can prevent collisions with a stationary object on the rails. Of course, collisions between trains can be avoided if someone monitors the positions of trains.
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
India is a BIG and relatively POOR place. Figure it out?
I might as that they beleive washing in fresh cow piss is a religous act.
Obviously they should have to go back to India and fix this problem. Of course India would rather spend its money on developing nuclear weapons. Hmmm.
But now, they can look forward to yoga classes, counselling for work as well as personal problems and air-conditioned rest rooms on long distance trips. While the GPS system drives the train?
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
So the trains have a GPS doohicky in 'em, alright. And ya say that there doohicky can stop the train if the driver doesn't? Okeydokey.
And so you're sayin' I could sit next to the tracks and stop trains with the WiFi card in my Zaurus? Neat-o.
Saves having to follow the schedule!
"Life's funny sometimes." "And sometimes it isn't." --Cat's Cradle
I have an idea for improving train safety.
The biggest problem for train safety is that a train is hard to stop. It has so much mass that you can't just suddenly decide to stop it. In a perfect world, you would have some warning before you needed to stop it.
So make a much smaller vehicle that can stop quickly, and have that run out ahead of the train! Call it the "point car". Sensors on the point car would watch for an obstruction on the tracks (such as a stalled truck) and would halt the point car quickly; the train would stop more slowly, but it would have enough warning that it could stop before it reached the point car, let alone the obstruction. Also, you could mount a video camera on the front of the point car, and the engineer driving the train could watch a live video feed. A wireless radio link is probably the best way for the point car and the train to communicate.
I'm sure the biggest problem with my idea is that it would cost too much. The point car would need fuel of some sort, and would itself be an expensive piece of equipment, and you would need one for each train. It would be cool if the point car could be driven by electric motors that somehow parasite power off the train, but I don't think any sort of power extension cord would be very practical.
And of course, if India is only now spending the money to put cushions in for engineers to sit on, they won't be the first ones to try point cars.
I don't know much about train crashes -- what fraction of train crashes are preventable with just GPS, and what fraction are not? If the most common problem is a train hitting another train, then GPS on both trains would help a lot. But GPS won't do much good if a truck stalls across the tracks.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I'll have to find another way to kill myself while in India. I was planning on lying on the train tracks.
Another reason why they would need this in India is the trains aren't as "safe" than in the states or other countries...?
Going to attach a GPS to each tree growing by the track, in case wind breaks it and it falls on the track obstructing it?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Yes. They do that in India. They don't believe in imprisonment of cows.
Indian Railways has over 62,000 route kms of track.
Indian Railways employs about 1.6 million people.
Carries over 11 million passengers & one million tonnes of freight everyday. (about 4.83 billion passengers and 492 million tons of freight per year)
It runs about 13,000 trains daily and has 6,984 railway stations.
The longest journey on Indian Railways is from Jammu Tawi to Kanyakumari, a distance of about 3,751 kms covered by Himsagar Express in about 66 hours.
Well, that sums up my thoughts after reading this article. Huh? GPS is really useful for a lot of things, and railroads use it to track there cars in the rail yard (with the help of radios which broadcast their location) and on the rails. And they can distinguish whether a car is on one track or the other if they have differential GPS set up.
As for collisions, it could help avoid crashes between 2 cars or between 1 car and a known obstruction, if they are using differential GPS to identify the track. Otherwise. I suppose if there's only one track, the railroads could use this info to prevent trains from colliding. Or if a bridge is out, the railroad could use software that gets the GPS info to alert the driver.
However, the article doesn't go into any details at all; maybe they'll just use it to identify conductors of recent accidents, which they could probably do just as well w/o GPS since the dispatchers know where the trains are anyways. Maybe this is just the easiest thing to implement with the GPS technology, and once it's in place, they'll expand. I wish the article had more info though, so I could spare everyone from my idle speculation.
Please read "Trains in Japan". Trains in Japan have been extremely reliable and clean since the 1950s -- almost half a century. In 1960, there was no GPS, no Internet, etc. Yet, the train system in Japan worked fine.
What in Indian culture prevents Indian society from developing into a modern society? Why does Indian society need all this high-tech intervention in order to make it just barely livable, yet Japan has been an adequately livable society since the late 1960s?
there has been 167 in this year alone in india. 229 people were killed and 394 injured. this is good news for people in india. we can only hope that it does not become another vapurware. india in the past has given up on good projects like this one.
Here's another reference.
Hey! Don't have a cow, man!
"The only solution for that is to get rid of the British laid century old tracks and lay new ones."
Well I predict that with the inflowing wealth, the Indian economy will soon have enough money to replace it all.
The article shotguns a lot of improvements in one page or so. There are several problems that need to be solved and one (or a few) of them can be solved using the GPS or similar system. If each train has a one GPS receiver and broadcasts its position, the driver can at least be cognizant there is another train nearby and have enhanced situational awareness. If there is only a single track, then he knows the train is likely on the same track as his. The most likely use is to prevent collisions - which have happened before.
The article does a bad job with the shotgun approach in that the collision with objects on the track (like rocks, carts, cars etc) is not preventable with GPS (practically speaking) and other methods have to be used for it.
" "Any problem by way of derailment or any other danger on the tracks will be picked up by the GPS and a warning will be conveyed via this device to the driver inside the engine cabin," Mr Sandhu says."
That sounds like snake oil.
Either that or there are other sensors broadcasting on the same frequency band and received and processed by the same "alerting system" on the train, that has been misunderstood by the non-technical person.
-srr
Not to mention that if more Indians would bother to learn English instead of tinkering with these GPS devices, they would be slightly more useful than a Sloth
Amidst the bombard of vendors during the wait, at least I know now where to obtain a false passport.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1= PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.h tm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5,791,294.WKU.&OS=PN/5,791,294& RS=PN/5,791,294
Must learn ho to do URLs
I read an article that said Japan has a major problem with "suicide by train". Despondent people stand on the tracks in front of an oncoming high-speed train.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Holy Cow Batman!
While this does seem like a very practical, important, and just plain cool use of GPS, I do see the one big, ominous problem of the US jamming/degrading the GPS system in the event of another war. As well they should, but this could be leathal for this technology.
From gge.unb.ca:
The GPS Standard Positioning Service (SPS) uses the C/A-code component of the GPS L1 signal which is transmitted on 1575.42 MHz. The C/A-code, which stands for coarse/acquisition-code, is a pseudorandom noise code which the GPS receiver uses to determine the distance to a satellite. The distance is determined by aligning the received code with a replica of the code generated in the receiver. By measuring at least four such distances to different satellites simultaneously and knowing where the satellites are from the navigation messages they transmit, the receiver can figure out where it is. The C/A-code is a relatively short code which repeats every millisecond and a GPS receiver can easily lock onto or acquire it.
The military's GPS capability is known as the Precise Positioning Service (PPS). It relies on a much longer code called the P-code (for precise or precision) which is transmitted on both the L1 frequency and the L2 frequency at 1227.60 MHz. The P-code is encrypted (and it's then called the Y-code) so that it cannot be accessed by unauthorized users. Encryption also prevents a military GPS receiver from being fooled or spoofed by a fake GPS signal transmitted by an enemy. The encryption process is known as Anti-Spoofing. Military GPS receivers have decryption capabilities which permit them to recover the P-code.
Each satellite's unique P-code segment is one week long. In order to determine the distance to a satellite using the P-code, the receiver must align a replica of the code it generates with the arriving code.
Prior to 2 May 2000, the accuracy afforded users of the GPS Standard Positioning Service (SPS) was purposefully degraded through a policy and technique known as Selective Availability (SA). The use of SA gave military users of GPS a position accuracy advantage - one it did not wish to share with potential adversaries. SA was effected by manipulating or dithering the output of each GPS satellite's active atomic clock. This clock controls the generation of all of the satellite's signals and hence the measurements made by a GPS receiver. SA was imposed at a level which would yield a stated SPS horizontal (latitude and longitude) accuracy of 100 metres or better 95 percent of the time for any point in the world during a measurement interval of one day. On 2 May 2000, by presidential decree, the level of SA was set to zero. SPS users immediately saw a quantum jump in positioning accuracy with factors of 5 to 10 improvements. Even a simple handheld receiver can now often yield horizontal position accuracies of 5 metres.
Now remember, we've more or less been fighting 3rd world countries as far as their military capabilities go, so their use of GPS against us was highly unlikely. But say we go to war with a real military anytime soon. A country like China could sustain a global conflict for a while, and has the technology to make effective use of GPS against us. It wouldn't suprise me then if the (useful) SPS signal soon after the start of a conflict of that scope became non-exist.
So, back to the point of this, unless the US gives the Indian government military grade GPS gear, there could be a disaster waiting to happen. Granted, the chances are low, but still something to think about. But even given this, I personally think this should be a good model for other advanced railway systems to look at.
Request: ECM unit, 1000 km fullerene cable, 1 tactical nuclear weapon. Reason: Birthday party for foreign dignitary.
I don't know if any has seen some of those indian trains on the news; some of them are literally covered with people, people hanging off the sides and sitting on the roof. I don't wanna imagine an indian train accident. I hope this technology will work.
A search for "GPS jammer" can be interesting for the bored.
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
Talking about trains always reminds me of my uncle Earl. Back in the day Earl took his test to become a train conductor since he loved trains so much.
It got to the oral part of the test and the proctor asked Earl "You have a northbound train running at 38 MPH and a southbound train on the same track running at 42 MPH. The trains are 6 miles from each other. Who do you call first to report this to?
Earl perked right up "I'll call my nephew imag0, of course!"
The proctor was puzzled and asked "Why would would call your nephew?"
"'Cause he's never seen a trainwreck before!"
But if it were a bus filled with outsourced IT contractors, then it would surely benefit jobs in the rest of the world.
It's all about stopping theft. You didn't really believe all that safety nonsense, did you? That's just to placate the plebes. Turns out, train theft is rampant in India, and GPS is the only practical way to track the locomotives to the chop shops.
I can see how train crashes could be a big problem since it is difficult to swerve out of the way of another train when you have to sit on wooden chairs.
I'm an Indian train driver, you insensitive clod!
Sounds like a bit of a recipe for disaster to me. Do you have a lot of train crashes in the US?
Here in Australia, we have two parallel tracks throughout metropolitan Sydney (and, I presume, the same in other cities that have commuter trains). On the inter-city routes, most are served by a single track, but they use a physical token passing system to control who is allowed to be on any particular section of track at any given point in time. As the train passed from one section of track to another, they hand over the token for the section they've just left, and pick up a new one for the section they're entering. The crews are, obviously, quite proficient at passing this token (which is a serial-numbered/labelled piece of metal rod about 20cm long, and 1cm diameter, placed in a leather holder with a big metal ring for the actual transfer), they have to. If they miss the token, they have to stop the train and go back and get it!!! (They do have some devices to somewhat mechanise the actual token swap at some stations/in some cases, but it's still a very interactive process.)
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
The usual semi-informed opinions about why it won't work, the spotting of 'obvious' flaws for the benefit of the designers (because they're clearly going to be unable to spot the obvious, are they?). References to Web sites detailing someone who's already done the same thing (but who also seems not to have managed to change the world with their invention or fired the public's imagination). Add a sprinkle of smart-ass comments modded as funny when they're not really. Someone will try and make reference to one or more of the following: Linux, beowulf clusters, sco, the dmca and big corporates. Someone will think it clever to string the word 'fuck' together in some rambling irrelevant post. There may even be some unoriginal, 'anatomical' ASCII art from a lamer that's just discovered that a large amount of time can be wasted with an artform most of us had a small amount of fun with about 15-20 years ago when we actually owned a dot matrix printer, had a copy of TheDraw, had a VT220 on our desk and wrote text-based login scripts for mainframes, minis and PC-based servers. Welcome to slashdot! All the world is here but many useful features have been disabled in this evaluation copy.
AT&ROFLMAO
So does RMS, but I don't hold it against him.
Yes of course it has to be made more accurate, and that's just what this professor at UCR's, Department of Electrical Engineering is working on. To quote what he says about it:
Global Positioning Systems: Accurate vehicle control requires reliable, accurate, high rate vehicle state information. We have developed and demonstrated a differential GPS/INS system to provide full six degree of freedom vehicle state information. Using GPS carrier phase and/or magnetometer measurements, we currently attain 2.5 cm. std. horizontal position accuracy. The INS provides the estimates at a higher rate (>150Hz) than the GPS itself is capable of providing. In addition, the INS maintains the vehicle state during brief periods of loss of GPS signal.
He also has some mpeg demo's available and also some reports (if you are really interested) on his home page (linked above).
-- How many sigs are as useless as this one?
Hire Muslims who are not adverse to runing over the damm cow on the tracks.
What you are describing is typically a local train in a major city, running no more than 50 to 80 kms total with stops every 2 to 5 kms.
The article refers to the long distance, inter city trains which cover anywhere from 200- to 3000+ kms in one run. It would be far more uncommon to see people hanging out of these trains as one has to have a reservation (read seat) to get on board. Of course there are other ways to get on a train, but my point stands.
Yet Socrates himself is particularly missed.
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed.
I think all trains especially passenger trains should have a sentry car of sorts that travels a distance ahead of the trian, far enough to alert the following train of problems so there can be a safe stop.
The sentry should be responsible for inspecting the track, looking for obstructions, and oncoming traffic. Could be unmanned if made that way.
Just a thought.
some numbers for comparison : :
:
Japan
total: 23,654 km (15,895 km electrified)
standard gauge: 3,059 km 1.435-m gauge (entirely electrified)
narrow gauge: 77 km 1.372-m gauge (entirely electrified); 20,491 km 1.067-m gauge (12,732 km electrified); 27 km 0.762-m gauge (entirely electrified) (2000)
India
total: 63,693 km (13,771 km electrified)
broad gauge: 45,103 km 1.676-m gauge
narrow gauge: 15,178 km 1.000-m gauge; 3,105 km 0.762-m gauge; 307 km 0.610-m gauge (2001)
Indian Railways runs around 11,000 trains everyday, of which 7,000 are passenger trains
Indian railways has come a long way since its beginning (in 1853). if high tech can improve the services , why not?
assuming they miss one in a thousand times, then 1000*1000, by having two shots at it, they'd now miss one in a million times?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Bull Bar may be an Aussie expression for
the unyielding 4WD protectors that are
now considered hazards to humans that
get in the way of speeding four-wheel-
drive vehicles.
Similar to wedge-shapped Cow Catchers,
but they just mangle, without chopping
into several bits (unless, of course,
the 4WD is miving very fast...)
So, a train-locating system can combine both GPS
(for near-enough position) and an APRS-like sys-
tem (capable of transmitting locally sensed data
- such as track ID, from a reliable transponder)
I suppose, of course, that, in India, we -might-
be able to hire enough poor people to live along
side of the tracks (eg, every 50 feet), and keep
watch for animals; on seeing one they transmit a
warning signal, heard/decoded by the engineer or
a system s/he can be slowed by.
Okay, they had problems getting the guy on a horse with a red flag up to a fast enough speed, but those are just details. (Like the problem of replacing the horse/rider after receiving a "You don't got raaaiiiilllll! *splat*" emessage from in front. ["Maybe he was dictating?"]))
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
The idea of a point car is superb, and self financing and maybe a profit centtre for Indian Railways. Consider a "point car" as a no-expense-spared levitating vehicle with AI and a battery of gizmos to help in the safety of the train. Scenario 1 - "Point Car" sees a truck on the track potentially causing a derailment. "Point Car" (PC) hails truck driver, "Clear the track"....."Clear the track please truck"....."Truck clear the track" PC drwas blaster and "BLAM", no more truck on the track. Scenario 2 - PC finds a cow laying down on the track. PC hails cow, "Move on cow".... "Shift lady"......"Get away girl". If no response PC draws prodding stick, not a blaster as cows are sacred. Scenario 3 - Man evily laughing next to screaming girl tied onto the track ahead of the train. PC blasts evil man and draws camera to record screaming girlie with pay-per-view access streamed to the world. Voting to decide whether girlie is freed by the PC or not (to vote online costs money, hence revenue for Indian Railways) Every quarter Indian Railways can release videos of action on the line to finance the cost of the PC such as More Trucks on the Line, More Screaming Girlies etc. Think its an excellent idea and should be put into effect immediately, Phil (just been called back to my padded cell....)
This is a better idea, or would be, ie
if the camera looked behind as well as
in front.
But... still not fool-proof in places,
where neither point vehicle nor train-
driver could see cow walking towards
the tracks.
...have fun...
p age=49632
http://www.simtel.net/product.php?url_fb_product_
AT&ROFLMAO
Japan had more brain-power available, at least
-after- the War (WW2), since fewer of its en-
gineers were wasted on defence projects.
It was about 12 months ago that I noticed that
an online computer shop (in India) had a match-
making site linked from the shop's website.
The matchmaking site's membership form asked for
one's caste, & I suppose it was a required
data field.
I'm thinking it would be more cost-effective and reliable for India to employ two people for every kilometer of track for every hour of the day, every day of the year. If someone notices a problem with the track, they should run to the next guy down the track with the news, who runs to the next guy, and so on.
In rural areas, they should just live in a little hovel next to the track, and marry their evening-shift relief, and raise little baby train-watchers. The trains can just drop off a bag of supplies to any inhabited checkpoint as their form of payment.
I only say this with my tongue half-in-cheek.
[
I'd be surprized if someone hasn't already don it,
but I've never seen any claims to the task's
succesful completion.
Apparently the same is true for the Bangladeshis.
Let's just blame it on the language...
Maybe you missed it yesterday, but they're gonna crash that into jupiter. :p
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
"Using GPS To Randomly Halt Trains In India"
"Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer." - Linux Advocac
France blew millions trying to develop Astree, a satellite-based train dispatching system. They failed.
Using GPS to monitor trains is ridiculous. It doesn't have the precision to determine on WHICH TRACK THE TRAIN IS; and if it had the precision to do so, you would need an extremely precise and onerous database to precisely locate every meter of every track.
The track itself is a fixed location, and over the last 120 years, technology has been developped to precisely locate trains on it, from people stationned by the track and reporting on train locations to multiple-frequency track circuits that do the job magnificiently without having to depend on foreign satellites that could be turned-off at the US's whim.
Proposing to use satellite to track trains is the result of a technocratic brain that haven't had the slightest real-world railroad experience.
Just imagine: DeLL / hp "support" all dead in train wreck. That's how they get to work - on the tops of trains. Next time you call "DeLL" ask the rep. how she got to work. Answer: on top of a train. That's right, ON TOP!
Adolph? Adolph, is that you? ;\
Un-news
A friend of mine's father works for the railroad here in the US. High level position that oversee's all of the traffic throughout the east.
As I understand it, they use all sorts of radio networks and GPS systems to track where all the trains and cars are. They have advanced enough tracking that they know what locamotives are where, how many cars are hooked up to it, which track its on, and where its going.
While technology isn't going to stop someone from hitting a boulder, it can get information around and see who is near the area and avoid as much damage as possible. It is foolish to think we can protect ourselves from everything, but a step in the right direction is progress none the less.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
Over the past 10 years the FRA and the US Railroads have been working on this. DGPS is
key, along with coordination with the various
railroads.
See Positive Train Control
http://www.fra.dot.gov/rdv/ptc/
How about "using lights, whistles, and train schedules" to prevent train crashes?
Why some article go to the front page just because it happens on India, gps have been used in trains for a long time.
...I find the Indian people warm, smart, and hard-working, but I find the sing-songy version of english tiresome to listen to. I imagine people kill themselves after listening to it for any length of time.
Can somebody fix that?
They are prone to running into high-rise buildings to protest people who don't worship allah.
This "proposed system" is completely a waste of time. Further down in the article, it reads: On top of this, drivers will be kept alert by a vigilance control device that will make sure they do not fall asleep while operating a train. This is a feature that locomotives in the US, Europe, Australia, and most of the rest of the world already have. It is a system that whenever the operator moves a control, rings the bell, etc., a timer is reset. If the timer expires, the train comes to the stop. This system is another reason why runaway trains happen so infrequently (when they do, it seems to center on fooling the system to think the brakes are applied). The GPS system wont help you until its too late and your trains have collided. There are other systems for train/track control called "cab signal" systems that provide block control (enforced speed limits) that would be much more useful but, on the other hand, more expensive to implement.
Damn! That's why my chain of steakhouses failed so miserably in India!
May be flamebait, but the dude has a valid point, that is, until he gets into the "taking over the world" mode.
BTW, who is Jesse?
The GPS system allows them to pin point the scene of the crash sooner...