MPGI National Multi Conference 2012 (MPGINMC-2012) “Advancement in Electronics & Telecommunication Engineering” 7-8 April, 2012 Proceedings published by International Journal of Computer Applications® (IJCA)ISSN: 0975 - 8887 28 Zero-Visibility Navigation For The Indian Railways Vatsalya Mathur 3 rd Year Electronics & Communications Department, Shri Ramdeobaba College of Engineering & Management (RCOEM), Nagpur. Kapileshwar Singh 3 rd Year Electronics & Communications Department, Shri Ramdeobaba College of Engineering & Management (RCOEM), Nagpur. M.D.Chawhan Asst. Professor Electronics & Communications Department, Shri Ramdeobaba College of Engineering & Management (RCOEM), Nagpur. ABSTRACT Every year the Indian Railways incurs heavy losses due to fogs. In last 3 years the Indian Railways has lost in access of 1 lakh crores due cancellation of trains, heavy delay in running trains and accidents occurring due to foggy conditions. Moreover many people have lost their lives in these mishaps, which has tagged the Indian Railways as „unsafe‟ and „unreliable‟. The Indian railways is an amazing example of successful government run enterprise not only in India but also for the whole world. Government has taken back foot policy of cancelling and delaying trains which has worsened the crisis. This project is aimed towards the normal operation of Indian Railways even in dense fog as well as in zero- visibility condition 1 This project puts forth an innovative and dynamic concept aimed to provide a practical tool in the hands of railways to fight with fogs and continue normal operations even in zero-visibility condition. The concept of this project “Zero-Visibility Navigation” is based on using different aspects such as laser signaling systems, RF signaling systems, embedded systems, digital communication systems as well as visual graphics and animation systems. A well designed system based on optimum utilization of all the above mentioned technologies is the zero-visibility navigation system. The first requirement is the speedy survey of a particular rail route and to compile a full and detailed database 2 which will store the relative positions of all the important landmarks useful in train movements All the intermediate signals, all the intermediate stations, warning signs, important signs, symbol boards, speed limit boards, information about forthcoming bridges, tunnel, trench, elevation, angle-turning, level- crossing etc All these important information of landmark will be fed into a database along with their respective distances. The system will take the instantaneous speed of the train from the speedometer at a particular sampling interval (preferably lesser sampling interval for better accuracy) and show all the landmarks accordingly on a display system which will be installed inside the locomotive. Also all the signals will be using Laser lights which can pierce fog easily. Hence the driver does not need to look outside in foggy condition and the system will drive him through the route effectively. For example if the Loco-driver starts from Jaipur station the software driven program will auto start and guide the driver up to the destination New-Delhi station. As the system is program driven the data from various other modern devices such as Anti-Collision Device 3 (ACD), Vigilance Control Device 4 (VCD) etc can also be included to make the system accurate and flawless. As the concept is fresh and innovative it might be thought to be a costly affair, but when program-run software games like road-rash and Y-city can be developed with thousands of crores of investment where unnecessary violence is shown, it is better to invest just a fraction of sum to save lives of people. On the basis of interviews and conversation it has been found out that this technology is very innovative and never ever thought of. This technology can change the face of Indian Railways and is also very efficient, feasible and cost-effective. Keywords 1 Zero-visibility, 2 database. 3 Anti-collision device, 4 vigilance control device. 1. INTRODUCTION It is the month of extreme winters in India and winter comes along with many other calamities such as fog. This fog causes several restrictions on the transport system. This project concerns itself over the damages and losses incurred by Indian railways every year due to fogs. Fog causes the following problems:- 1. Due to extremely low visibility many serious rail accidents occur causing severe loss to life and property. 2. The trains get late by hours together causing difficulties to passengers and losses to the railways. This year the Indian railways followed a back-foot policy of cancelling certain trains and reducing the speed of many others by considerable margins causing complete chaos. The basic problem still lies to be the fact of poor visibility and the railways does not want to take any risks against life of passengers. The train accidents reportedly took place due to heavy fog , low visibility and human error. The accidents have raised serious concerns on railway safety. During fog conditions trains must stick to the speed limit of 30 km per hour and in the dense fog International eight km per hour.Railway officials say most accidents are due to the failure of their own staff. But of the 177 accidents that occurred in 2008 to 2010, less than half were due to human error.The truth is the railways are still using outdated techniques like detonators to warn the train drivers during fog.When the train passes over them the driver gets a warning to slow down. Another technique is for train drivers blow the horn ahead of crossings to warn road users. This project is a modern solution to this problem. The railways recently have approved to use LED signaling system. But even LED is incapable of piercing the fog. Instead use of LASER signals will enable efficient signaling