Design of the Fall-Block Sensing of the Railway Line Pantograph Based on 3D Machine Vision Sensors

As an important part of the electric locomotive in railway transportation, the sensing and inspection of the pantograph has a significant effect on the safe operation of the train. In general, the pantograph carbon slip detection items include slide wear detection, slip strip crack detection, carbon slip fall-block detection and slip strip wear detection. The emergence and development of structured light measurement technology with 3D sensors provide new technical means for the acquisition of spatial 3D information. The three-dimensional data can not only obtain more information but also reduce the data deviation, thereby improving the measurement accuracy and work efficiency. At present, few studies have been conducted on the slide block and partial wear of the carbon slide. Therefore, this paper studies the detection of the pantograph slide block based on 3D sensor measurement technology. The experimental results indicate that it is feasible to adopt 3D measurement technology to detect the fall-block of the pantograph slide. In addition, a sound detection effect can also be obtained.