Joining sensor systems for railway vehicle inspection

In today's field of railway, a number of stand alone inspection systems are available and each of them addresses only particular train fault-states. Our work describes a concept for integration of these systems into a complete "checkpoint" system with regard to the specific application range of railway vehicle inspection. In contrast to single fault-state detection systems, our concept of an overall system allows to combine sensor information and to evaluate train fault-states from a more global view. Hence, it provides an abstract data representation for establishing a common data base. To achieve enhanced information combining sensor data of asynchronously working sensor systems, a tight association between measurements and their particular measurement ranges on the train is an elementary functionality. As a crucial aspect, the accuracy of train fault estimation can be proved by the system. Furthermore, the ability of the overall system in characterizing fault-states will mostly be extended.