Briefing 2020

Initial situation

The railway system and the associated safety technology have been subject to constant change since the beginning. An increasingly complex railway infrastructure and changes in the mobility behaviour of passengers require innovations in the direction of increased efficiency, increased capacity and increased system availability. These innovations must always follow the existing safety requirements, which are specified by international safety standards (CENELEC).

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As Thales Austria, we are focusing on innovative solutions and new system concepts for railway control in the course of our digitization offensive. This means leaving the classic block-based infrastructure-centric system and moving towards train-centric control, as provided for in the Open Innovation Initiative of ÖBB and the Smart Rail 4.0 offensive of SBB, among others.

We are investing in technology to make modern computer generations (Cloud, Wireless Communication, Industrial IoT) usable in the safety-critical railway environment.

To this end, security mechanisms are being extended to areas that are not technically feasible today - by using Industrial IoT to better map environmental influences or hazards (avalanches, rockfall, fire, etc.), which among other things provides a basis for the autonomous train of the future.

In order to test these new types of systems, we participate in various test sites, for example at the Open Rail Lab of ÖBB and the Digital Test Field of DB.

Task

We are looking for creative ideas and solutions to implement such rail infrastructure monitoring IoT elements. They should be robust (use in railway environments), cost-effective (there are many tracks and trains) and available by using different sensors (sensor fusion). In order to be able to test these innovations directly at Thales or to present them in a customer effective way, we use a test facility in Vienna, where we want to test technologies and present them in a customer effective way.

Perspectives

During the entire core period of this year's Industry meets Makers program, we will support you with expert know-how. We organize demand-oriented workshops and meetings and provide insights into our existing prototypes and development methods. Furthermore, we provide you with the necessary hardware components and development boards within a pre-defined framework so that you can realize your ideas together with us.

Of course we can imagine to cooperate with you also in the long term. The integration of the new technologies into our products is our goal.

Dates and processes

We presented our briefing on April 16th at the Industry Meets Makers online kick-off event (see pitch video below) and then started the co-creation process.

Throughout the entire duration of this year's Industry Meets Makers program, we will be happy to coordinate with you in individually arranged online meetings and to support you with our expert know-how in the development process.

We will also be present at the Virtual Future Tech Bootcamp, which will take place from June 29th to July 2nd, in order to work out concrete solutions with you. Together with Infineon we have developed a special briefing for this event. See "IoT on train featuring the Sense2GoL radar sensor".

The Best of Industry meets Makers closing event will take place on September 30th at the Digital Days at the ERSTE Campus in Vienna. At this event we will be able to present everything we have developed until then.

Thales-Industry-Pitch @ #IMM2020-Online-Kick-off (April 16th, 2020)

Contact

Peter Tummeltshammer (Research and Innovation), Salomé Christiani (Innovation) and Martin Lampel (Product Management) are available as contact persons from Thales Austria GmbH for this project.

About Thales Austria

As a global technology leader, Thales is already shaping the world of tomorrow today. Thales invests heavily in digital innovation - connectivity, big data, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity - technologies that help businesses, organizations and governments at critical moments. In Austria, customers rely on Thales, especially in the rail transport sector. With our expertise in control and security technology, we also ensure the safe and efficient transport of people and goods in Central and Eastern European markets. With 400 employees in Vienna, Thales supports its customers in every phase of a project.