TRENITALIA BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND SANT’ANNA SCHOOL TECIP INSTITUTE RESEARCHERS MEET TO DISCUSS JOINT PROJECT STATUS AND PLAN FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS

Trenitalia Executive Board members visited the Sant'Anna TeCIP Institute (Communication Technologies, Information, and Perception) to discuss joint project status and plan future developments. The meeting, held in the presence of the Rector Pierdomenico Perata, provided an accurate update of projects and most relevant training and research activities progress, in addition to Sant’Anna School’s growth prospects.

The meeting participants included Trenitalia representatives Barbara Morgante, CEO; Tiziano Onesti, President and Marco Caposciutti, Technical Director. Professor Massimo Bergamasco, Director of TeCIP Institute, and the researchers of the Institute, also presented the PercRo (Perceptual Robotics) Lab. Activities and external research impacts.

Trenitalia and Sant'Anna TeCIP Institute joint innovative projects are intended to improve railway systems safety and security, implementing the application of technologies that combine "internet of things" with "big data” collected, correlated and analyzed in real time.

“Vision guided robotic systems to improve condition-based maintenance solutions" is the project coordinated by Professor Carlo Alberto Avizzano and his team, which aims to build a new data acquisition and semi-autonomous monitoring system for rolling stock condition monitoring and inspection. The system, composed of a robot hybrid architecture, rooms, laser, is able to perform the "three-dimensional radiography" of a train passing through a portal equipped with detectors. The results are then processed and integrated with the new Trenitalia architecture "On-Condition Maintenance". Finally, the data is made accessible to local and remote users with immersive visualization techniques and direct analysis.

The preliminary prototype will be installed and validated at Osmannoro (Florence) Trenitalia Tuscany Region maintenance center.

A second project “Train on-board sensor network data transmission” which involves the TeCIP Institute and the national transportation company was presented by Prof. Piero Castoldi and his team; the project uses wireless sensor networks technologies, implementing the "internet of things" to monitor railways. The prototype will be delivered in the second half of 2017 and will enable wireless communication between carriages.

After the meeting, the CEO of Trenitalia Barbara Morgante, expressed satisfaction with the partnership outcomes, proposing future plans to implement changes and make improvements. The Director of the TeCIP Institute and founder of the Laboratory of Perceptual Robotics (PERCRO) added that "awareness is reached by both parties embracing a fiduciary relation. We are ready to translate the research results into concrete projects".