Late at night, as the last train of Metro Line 5 slowly drove back to the base stock road, a yellow robot with a "thick" appearance appeared. Under the operation of the technicians, it slowly approached the urban rail vehicle that had been running for a day, flexibly rotating a pair of "big eyes" on the mechanical arm to take pictures of the key maintenance points at the bottom of the train and check their health status.
This "Huang Fatzi" is actually an LPT urban rail vehicle intelligent inspection robot, which is developed and designed by Chengdu Shengkai Technology Co., Ltd. located at No. 369, Wenjia Street, Qingyang District, and is mainly used in the maintenance trench of the urban rail vehicle maintenance warehouse, and has been used in more than 10 subway companies across the country, with a total of more than 1,000 vehicles.
The rapid development of the subway has brought convenience to citizens, but also brought challenges to vehicle maintenance support. However, the innovative application of high-tech in the metro field, including the "Yellow Fat Man", has not only become an important force in shaping the new standards of the urban rail industry, but also represents the new quality of productivity to lead the urban rail transit into the AI era.
It integrates a number of high-tech equipment
In the production workshop of Chengdu Shengkai Technology Co., Ltd., several technicians are nervously busy, some are discussing the data on the computer, and some are squatting next to a "yellow fat man" to check......
"The robotic arm above it is up to 2 meters long, which can flexibly enter the underside of the vehicle or other hard-to-reach areas, making vehicle detection more accurate and effective. At the same time as Gao Chunliang, executive vice president of Chengdu Shengkai Technology Co., Ltd., introduced, the "yellow fat man" under the operation of technical personnel slowly started, and the mechanical arm slowly extended and began to rotate 360° with the instructions.
"It may not seem like it has anything, but it is equipped with a number of high-tech equipment, and it has a high degree of autonomy and intelligence. Gao Chunliang told reporters that this robot uses intelligent robot technology, SLAM autonomous navigation technology, multi-degree of freedom flexible collaborative robotic arm control technology, high-definition optical imaging technology, image pattern recognition technology, AI deep learning algorithm and other cutting-edge technologies to accurately image the key points of the train running department and intelligently judge the abnormal state of the key components of the running department. Compared with the existing equipment, it has the use of image feature recognition and deep learning algorithm technology, breaking through the problem of many false alarms; the first domestic independent switching strand technology, can realize the free transfer of a robot between different strands and multi-robot group collaborative operation; the first robot and 360 ° whole vehicle image inspection equipment linkage technology, to achieve multi-angle detection, and rely on machine vision technology to achieve the analysis and judgment of target defects. ”
At the same time, the operation mode of "Yellow Fat Man" is fully automatic. After the train returns to the maintenance warehouse after the main line passenger operation, the operator can remotely issue a work order to the robot in the standby state, and it can automatically drive to the bottom or side of the train to be inspected according to the predetermined route, collect images, and give an alarm when encountering abnormal conditions. After the work is over, the "Yellow Fat Man" returns to the original way for automatic charging, and a single charge can meet the working time of 6 hours.
"Man-machine combination" to improve the quality of maintenance
Hard hard helmets, long coats and trousers, and semi-confined space under the car are like a "steamer", close to 40 degrees all year round...... For the "physical examination" of subway trains, it is divided into a routine inspection once a day and an in-depth maintenance once a month. The traditional inspection of subway vehicles is mainly based on manual visual inspection, but the working environment during maintenance is difficult, the labor intensity is also very large, and the hard work of workers is extraordinary.
"The distance from the trench to the top surface of the track is about 1.1 meters, and there is only bending down and shuttling back and forth in small steps during the under-car maintenance, and the outside of the trench also needs to climb up and down from beginning to end. Gao Chunliang's words restored the daily work of subway train maintenance workers.
Gao Chunliang introduced that the current conventional ratio of people to vehicles is 0.6, that is, the maintenance of 100 trains requires 60 manual maintenance. Chengdu Shengkai Technology Co., Ltd. has done a "man-machine competition", and the advantages are immediate. It takes 1 hour for a subway train with 6 carriages and 1 person to complete the overhaul, and 40 minutes for the robot to check out the problems more accurately.
"Traditional manual inspection will be affected by the technical level and mental state of maintenance personnel, and there are often blind spots, and sometimes it is difficult to detect and warn in advance. In other words, the traditional manual precision inspection mode has a lot of uncertainties and is becoming more and more difficult to meet future needs, and the emergence of intelligent robots just makes up for these problems.
Through preliminary calculations, the intelligent inspection robot can replace the inspection of parts under the vehicle and on the side of the vehicle with almost full coverage, and the accuracy rate of foreign object detection reaches 98%. Intelligent robots will continue to train and learn autonomously, and the detection accuracy will be further improved in the future.
"The structure of the subway vehicle is very complex, and it is inseparable from manual maintenance, using a combination of man and machine, once the robot identifies a suspected fault, the system will alarm and be rechecked by the staff. But 'unmanned inspection' is definitely the direction of future development efforts. Gao Chunliang said.
According to statistics, in the new mode of vehicle maintenance of "man-machine combination", 70-80% of the manual maintenance workload can be saved, which not only liberates manpower, reduces the labor intensity brought by night shifts, but also realizes the transformation of maintenance from civil air defense to technical defense.
Increase R&D investment to explore "unmanned inspection"
It is reported that Chengdu Shengkai Technology Co., Ltd. integrates R&D, production and sales, mainly relying on the "Southwest Jiaotong University Optoelectronic Engineering Research Institute" and "Nondestructive Testing Research Center", based on the research and development of international leading technology, with optical image and non-destructive testing two core technologies and independent intellectual property rights, the launch of a number of products are being drafted into industry standards, but also become a number of subway companies each line of the standard configuration products.
In addition to urban rail vehicle inspection, the high-tech technology carried by "Huang Fatzi" also covers power inspection, tunnel and other fields, and its products have covered nearly 200 subway lines in 46 cities at home and abroad, with more than 800 sets of application performance. "The company's goal is to become the best technical service enterprise in the field of urban rail transit safety monitoring in China, and to become the preferred brand for operational safety. ”
However, although the market prospect is broad, but based on the complexity of the scene, the diversification of demand and other specific factors, at present, in the country and even the world urban rail industry, the application of intelligent inspection robots is still being explored, only some urban subways open the first trial, to achieve this goal, "science and technology", "innovation" and other elements that represent new quality productivity are indispensable.
"The new quality productivity is a contemporary advanced productive force born by technological revolutionary breakthroughs, innovative allocation of production factors, and deep industrial transformation and upgrading, with the characteristics of high technology, high efficiency and high quality, and its core driving force is scientific and technological innovation. Gao Chunliang said that as an intelligent technology-based enterprise, he hopes to use science and technology to empower industrial development. To this end, the company continues to increase R&D investment, R&D technicians account for more than 30% of the total number, and the annual R&D investment exceeds 10% of the output value. "In the future, we will continue to increase R&D investment, focus on the industry's 'pain points', drill deep into cutting-edge technologies, and continue to develop original technologies and products. ”
Gao Chunliang also expressed the hope that in the future, the government can give more guidance and support in the standardization construction and international cooperation in related fields, promote the healthy development of the industry, and promote China's advanced and mature technology to the world and embark on a broader stage.
Courtesy of Chengdu Shengkai Technology Co., Ltd