Vegetation suppression system on and near the railway tracks based on PLC and deep learning

Vegetation suppression on and near the railway tracks is very important to keep trains running safely and on time. This paper presents an automated real-time system, developed for the Serbian Railways company, that is used to maintain vegetation on and near railway tracks. This system allows precise spraying of herbicides only in locations where it is really needed, unlike older systems for controlling vegetation where herbicides are sprayed evenly along the railways tracks. The system consists of a camera mounted on a locomotive, which records the railway in front of the train, the video stream from the camera is sent to the standard PC and processed using software based on convolutional neural networks. This software allows the detection of weed and bushes on and near the railway tracks and sends signals to the PLC when it is the right moment to activate the herbicide sprayers.