Roadmaps for A.I. Integration in the Rail Sector
We are glad to report on the latest project dissemination events, including an article published on Global Railway Review (link below), a poster on “Dataset Challenges in Railway Machine Learning Applications” (see picture below) presented at the LNU Big Data Conference 2022, project status presentation at Europe’s Rail Innovation Days, and a research seminar given at Linnaeus University, where project-funded PhD student Lorenzo De Donato is currently spending a visiting period.
The program of AI4RAILS 2022 is now out !
The workshop will be held on September 12, 2022 in Zaragoza (Spain).
The program includes a keynote on Artificial intelligence, case of the railway sector: state of play and perspectives from Christian Chavanel, Director of the Rail System Department at International Union of Railways (UIC).
AI4RAILS 2022 is colocated with the EDCC 2022 conference.
Information regarding workshop registration and conference logistics may be found on the EDCC 2022 web site.
Our PhD student Lorenzo De Donato will present a talk “Trustworthy AI for safe autonomy of smart railways: directions and lessons learnt from other sectors” in the The 13th World Congress on Railway Research is coming to Birmingham, UK 6-10 June 2022 (https://www.wcrr2022.co.uk/website/938/ ). See here for details:
*** The program is now available here ***
The impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the industry has been so disruptive that it gave rise to a new wave of research and applications. Several industries, mainly in logistics and manufacturing, have benefited significantly from AI adoption and this positive trend is planned to be kept in the future. Modern and future railways represent one of the fields in which AI is expected to have a significant impact in a medium to long term perspective, to get higher levels of automation. Despite this opening for unprecedented scenarios in railway systems, it also raises concerns regarding system dependability and new threats associated with a high level of autonomy.
Therefore, the first step towards the adoption of AI in the railway sector is understanding to what extent AI can be considered reliable, safe and secure. In such a context, building upon the ongoing Shift2Rail project RAILS (Roadmaps for the AI integration in the raiL Sector), in 2019 the AI4RAILS workshop series has been started with the aim to provide annually a forum for researchers, practitioners and business leaders to discuss and share new perspectives, ideas, technologies and solutions for effective and dependable integration of AI techniques in rail-based transportation systems.
AI4RAILS 2022 is the 3rd workshop in the series, designed to gather the best idea, comments and experiences related to the adoption of AI in railways. The series is supported by an ongoing Shift2Rail project, named RAILS (Roadmaps for the AI integration in the raiL Sector), and represents an open forum for researchers working on these themes. In fact, the Advisory Board of the RAILS project will be invited since it includes railway stakeholders and companies operating in both the AI and railway market as well as the entire set of companies and research centres of the Shift2Rail community.
The themes of the workshop are relevant for the EDCC community and consistent with its aims and scope. The railway domain represents a critical domain in which all the aspects of dependability and security should be continuously addressed as a consequence of technical and technological progress. In the context of AI adoption, current literature includes different attempts of adopting AI techniques for increasing the automation level and the overall dependability of railways. AI4RAILS represents a unique forum for researchers, practitioners and business leaders to present and discuss their latest research results on theory, approaches and tools for the design, validation, operation and evaluation of dependable and secure railways by means of AI techniques.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
AI for railway safety, availability, reliability and security
Transferability to railways of AI approaches from other sectors (e.g., avionics, automotive, etc.)
Autonomous and cooperative driving, including virtual coupling
Automatic detection of signals, pedestrians and obstacles
Predictive maintenance and defect detection
AI for traffic planning and management
Adversarial perturbations to AI with a focus on railway case-studies
Cognitive Digital Twins for Railways
Resource allocation with a focus on railway case-studies
Run-time model checking and AI with a focus on railway case-studies
Explainable and trustworthy AI in railway applications
Safe autonomy standards and railway certification of compliance
Datasets and real-world case studies
Paper submission deadline: June 20th, 2022 (EXTENDED)
Author notification: July 2nd, 2022 (EXTENDED)
Camera-ready paper due: July 9th, 2022 (EXTENDED)
Submitted papers must be unpublished and not considered elsewhere for publication. Submissions will undergo a rigorous review process handled by the Technical Program Committee. Papers will be selected based on their originality, significance, relevance, and clarity of presentation. Only electronic submissions in PDF format through the submission site (https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=ai4rails2022) will be considered.
The AI4RAILS proceedings will be published by Springer in the series Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS).
Papers must be in English, up to 12 pages in Springer format, including references and appendices. Information for authors, LaTeX and Microsoft Word templates, as well as formatting guidelines, can be found here.
Submitting authors are requested to note that the publication of the paper in the proceedings will be subject to attending the conference and presenting in person (unless the pandemic situation does not allow it) and register their attendance upon submitting the camera ready version.
Valeria Vittorini, University of Naples Federico II, Italy – ✉ (send an email)
Francesco Flammini, Mälardalen University & Linnaeus University, Sweden – ✉ (send an email)
Rob Goverde, TU Delft Transport Institute, Netherlands – ✉ (send an email)
Ronghui Liu, University of Leeds, United Kingdom – ✉ (send an email)
Roberto Nardone, University of Naples “Parthenope”, Italy – ✉ (send an email)
Stefano Marrone, University of Naples Federico II, Italy – ✉ (send an email)
Nikola Bešinović, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
Lorenzo De Donato, Unversity of Naples Federico II, Italy
Francesco Flammini, Mälardalen University & Linnaeus University, Sweden
Rob Goverde, TU Delft Transport Institute, Netherlands
Ronghui Liu, University of Leeds, United Kingdom
Fredrik Heintz, Linköping University, Sweden
Leonardo Impagliazzo, Hitachi Rail STS, Italy
Zhiyuan Lin, University of Leeds, UK
Stefano Marrone, University of Naples Federico II, Italy
Claudio Mazzariello, Hitachi Rail STS, Italy
Roberto Nardone, University of Naples “Parthenope”, Italy
Alberto Petrillo, University of Naples Federico II, Italy
Danijela Ristic-Durrant, University of Bremen, Germany
Carlo Sansone, University of Naples Federico II, Italy
Stefania Santini, University of Naples Federico II, Italy
Valeria Vittorini, University of Naples Federico II, Italy
Slides from our RAILS Mid-term Workshop (25 February 2022) are now available on our website:
Invited speakers:
“New steps forward in railways smart maintenance”: In2Smart2
“Electrical and electronic applications for railways”: Cenelec_TC_9X_SG34
“Validate AI Based Perception”: Validate_AI_Based_Perception
“The need for standard XAI — Explainable Artificial Intelligence”: ExplainableAI
RAILS:
Bird’s eye view: RAILS_MT
WP1: RAILS_MT_WP1
WP2: RAILS_MT_WP2
WP3: RAILS_MT_WP3
WP4: RAILS_MT_WP4
The RAILS mid-term workshop will be held online (MS Teams) on 25th February 2022.
The main objectives of the workshop are:
Talks from RAILS researchers and invited speakers are planned for the morning.
A panel of experts will be held early in the afternoon to discuss aspects related to the development of roadmaps for the integration of data-driven and AI techniques in the rail sector.
The draft program of the workshop is now available here!
To attend the workshop, please register here.
Members of RAILS will attend several conferences presenting output of the project in 2021.
(https://meetings2.informs.org/wordpress/anaheim2021/)
(http://isola-conference.org/isola2021/)
Lorenzo DE DONATO PhD Student in Computer Engineering, RAILS Ambassador, University of Naples Federico II, Italy: Roadmaps for the Integration of Artificial Intelligence in Railways
(https://www.smartrailcongress.com/)
Wed 24, Nov 3:00 pm – 3:20 pm
During this session we examine the links between fatalities and factors such as homelessness and lifestyles and the strategies and technologies being used to effectively reduce occurrences in what is a difficult but important issue to address. We will also consider new developments in track detection technologies to prevent trespassing incidents.
(Original webpage: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeUNBU3VUCBXzaM5O3sqM4kpMM8GgwPTs7wpU_zXkmecOTO3g/viewform)
This survey aims at obtaining a deeper understanding of the Challenges and State-of-Practice (SoP) of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in railway transportation from the perspective of diverse stakeholders. Results are collected in the context of the H2020 Shift2Rail project RAILS (Roadmaps for A.I. integration in the raiL Sector), to understand priorities and requirements when defining the roadmaps for AI integration in the rail sector.
The survey is distributed to Shift2Rail members, project partners and other project participants, as well as to other railway organizations and regulatory bodies. Aggregated and anonymous results will be disseminated primarily through the project website https://rails-project.eu/.
You are welcome to add customized answers by using the text box “Other”.
We would like to thank you in advance for the time you will invest in filling this survey!
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Please note that at the end of the questionnaire you can decide whether to share your personal data with the project team and if you are available to be contacted, otherwise you can remain fully anonymous.
Please note that even if you agree to be contacted, we will not share your name and affiliation with anyone except the project team. Only aggregated and anonymous results of the survey will be publicly disclosed.
If you encounter any problems, need clarifications, or want to report your feedback on the questionnaire, please contact:
Prof. Valeria Vittorini (project leader): valeria.vittorini@unina.it
Prof. Francesco Flammini (technical leader): francesco.flammini@lnu.se
THE SURVEY WILL CLOSE ON 31st MAY 2021!
We successfully ran the first Advisory Board Meeting on 1st March 2021 online. We would like to thank all AB members who participated in this meeting and for their valuable contributions! We saw many interesting presentations there and would like to keep this momentum in the future.
AB memebers to joined the meeting:
Athens, Greece
The impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques on industry has been so disruptive that it gave rise to a new wave of research and applications. Several industries, mainly in logistics and manufacturing, have benefited significantly from AI adoption and this positive trend is planned to be kept in the future. Modern and future railways represent one of the fields in which AI is expected to have a significant impact in a medium to long term perspective, in order to get higher levels of automation of railway processes. On the one hand, this opens for unprecedented scenarios for railway systems, and on the other hand, it also raises concerns regarding system dependability and new threats associated with a high level of autonomy.
Therefore, the first step towards the adoption of AI in the railway sector is understanding to what extent AI can be considered effective, reliable, safe and secure. In such a context, building upon the ongoing Shift2Rail project RAILS (Roadmaps for the AI integration in the raiL Sector), the aim of AI4RAILS is to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners to discuss and share new perspectives, ideas, technologies and solutions for an effective and dependable integration of AI techniques in rail-based transport systems.
More details can be found at: https://rails-project.eu/ai4rails/