Attenuation of the vibration effects in a 3D coordinates measurement system installed in a railway car

This paper presents a novel solution to minimize errors due to vibrations when obtaining the 3D coordinates from a camera and a laser emitter. The objective of this application is to obtain the 3D coordinates of the contact wires of the catenary in the electric system of a railway. The noncontact measurement system must go on board of a locomotive machine (measurement car) and it is composed of 3 cameras, a laser and two marks. One of the cameras (a high performance one) and the laser are used to obtain the 3D coordinates of the contact wire. The other two cameras (with worse performance) along with the two marks are used to determine the errors due to the vibrations that undergo the measurement system of the 3D coordinates of contact wire. We present the general scheme of the system, the mathematical model for the simulation of the system and the results obtained in the simulations.