ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY AND RESEARCH CORPORATION — Department of Transportation SBIR Phase II: 131FR1

Description

Highway-rail grade crossings, at which there is an abrupt change in the level of the road surface as it crosses the tracks, present a severe hang-up risk to vehicles with low ground clearance. In Phase I and II, ATR developed a conceptual design for a Low Ground Clearance Vehicle Detection System (LGCVDS) to actively prevent such accidents. The LGCVDS is able to use a priori crossing profile data and measurements of the vehicle underbody profile in order to assess hang-up risk and warn the vehicle driver of the hazard. The Phase IIB effort extends this capability to support route planners in order to completely avoid risky crossings. By leveraging low cost in-vehicle navigation systems and low cost sensors that are becoming available on mobile platforms, the LGCVDS can provide a significant benefit to both commercial trucking companies and non-commercial vehicle operators by reducing the cost and time for transporting their payloads. A cloud based service will be developed under the Phase IIB program that enables third party route planners and navigation systems to incorporate vehicle hang-up risks.