An Integrated Robotic System for Autonomous Brake Bleeding in Rail Yards

Arpit Jain

Abstract: Current operations in rail yards are dangerous and limited by the op- erational capabilities of humans being able to make critical decisions in the presence of incomplete or incorrect information. Such issues call out the need for robust and capable autonomous systems. In this paper, we outline one such autonomous solution for the railroad domain, capable of performing the brake bleeding inspection task in a hump yard. Towards that, we integrate a large form factor mobile robot (the Clearpath Grizzly) with an industrial manipulator arm (Yasakawa Motoman SIA20F) to effectively detect, identify and subse- quently manipulate the brake lever under harsh outdoor environments. In this paper, we focus on the system design and the core algorithms necessary for re- liable and repeatable system execution. To test our developed solution, we per- formed extensive field tests in a fully operational rail yard with randomly picked rail cars under day and night-time conditions. The results from the test- ing are promising and validate the feasibility of deploying an autonomous brake bleeding solution for railyards.