AI tools are being developed to work with satellite data to accelerate rail electrification.
Awarded grant funding from the UK Space Agency’s Unlocking Space for Business programme, Furrer+Frey will integrate satellite imagery into their automated electrification design tool, helping planners and designers visualise design options more quickly.
E+BOT will be able to produce RIBA stage 1 (concept) drawings very quickly, to be refined and developed further by engineers.
They aim to shrink a process from days of specialised engineering time to hours of computer processing to produce viable options. The outputs would be reviewed and validated by trained engineers, but the painstaking process of surveying and redrawing would be automated.
Building on Furrer+Frey’s ‘E+BOT’ design tool, which considers thousands of electrification design variations to recommend the best options based on cost and embodied carbon, the project will enable designers to quickly overlay different options onto satellite imagery for consideration and decision making.
The project sees the British arm of the Swiss-based Furrer+Frey partner with Airbus Defence & Space.
Noel Dolphin, Head of UK Projects, said:
“This is one of the use cases where we think AI and satellites can really add value to the work of engineers – speeding up electrification. Our design tool will do the hard yards of considering thousands of different ways of tackling a problem, and make some recommendations based on the data. It’ll then present these options overlaid on high resolution satellite imagery for detailed consideration and feedback, before iterating the process again or moving on to choose and refine the design, speeding-up what is today a lengthy period of manual design iteration.
“We’re bringing Airbus’ advanced space technology into use on the railway.”
Lydia Green, Head of Unlocking Space programme at UK Space Agency, said:
“This project demonstrates how space technology can drive innovation across multiple sectors of our economy. By combining satellite imagery with AI-powered design tools, Furrer+Frey is tackling one of the key challenges in our journey towards net zero – accelerating rail electrification whilst reducing costs and carbon impact.
“The UK Space Agency’s Unlocking Space for Business programme exists to support exactly these kinds of transformative applications, where space capabilities can solve real-world problems. This collaboration between Furrer+Frey and Airbus Defence & Space shows British ingenuity at its finest – using cutting-edge satellite data to revolutionise how we design and deliver critical infrastructure.”
Furrer+Frey’s ‘E+BOT’® tool evaluates thousands of electrification design permutations for a given route, considering key system parameters such as wire sizes and tensions, heights, maximum tension lengths, distances between structures, structure placement and wind impacts as well as their cost implications, based on real PLM (plant, labour, and materials).