Design of safety equipment for railroad level crossings using laser range finder

Concerns regarding railroad safety have been raised worldwide due to the increased number of railroad accidents including high speed train collisions. As a consequence, the importance of safety in railroad operations has been more emphasized recently and therefore the related safety facilities are drawing attentions. As statistics shows, a large portion of railroad accidents is related to railroad level crossings and the obstacle detection at the crossings is an important problem for railroad safety. In this paper, while focusing on the local situations in Korea, the problems of the current system for level crossing obstacle detection are studied and the design of new safety system is proposed using laser range finders. The proposed system shows improved adaptability to weather changes and increased maintainability while minimizing the blind spots.