Fog Vision Instrumentation

The project envisages development of instrumentation for improving the visibility during foggy weather, night and bad weather conditions by developing a Fog vision system. Train movement gets severely hampered during foggy climatic conditions. The weather conditions consistently worsen with fog getting more opaque and such weather conditions extends for months. Instrumentation technology needs to be developed to enable the train driver to see through the fog for uninterrupted and safe train operation. After examining several options such as Radar (mm-wave), Radiometer (mm-wave), Radiometer (infrared), Sonar(ultrasonic), etc, it has been concluded that laser based viewing systems will be most suited for the Fog Vision Application. Information like position of obstacles on the track ahead should be made available on the graphical console display. The distance covered should be at least equal to the normal distance visible due to the driver under normal night conditions. Optical visibility may become nearly zero in severe fog conditions. Hence, sensors with fog penetration capability should be developed and data from them processed to give an enhanced image of the track ahead on a console. There may be requirement for developing multiple types of sensors to cater to different scenarios. In such cases, data from multiple sensors should be used intelligently to give a single display on the console. Active Infrared stereo vision using gating will enable the enhancement of infrared viewing under heavy attenuation in foggy conditions.

Power Requirement Graph	The Fog Chamber

Project Team