ETALON Final Conference February 2020 Brussels

The ETALON consortium has organised the project's Final Conference on Tuesday 25th February 2020. The event gathered participants, including project consortium members and stakeholders from the rail industry. 

The first session of the event included welcomes from Lea Paties (Shift2Rail IP2 Programme Manager),a general introduction of the project from Jose Bertolin (Project Coordinator)and an extensive summary of the Objectives and Challenges of the project presented by Daniele Trentini (Technical Leader).

The second session was dedicated to the presentation of the work done in the technical work packages. A summary of the activities performed on the different WPs were presented: Economic Analysis (Matteo Ferrari, LINKS Foundation), Communication Solution (Francesco Sottile, LINKS Foundation), Energy Harvesting Solution (David Vincent, Perpetuum) and Testing and Validation of the Proposed Solutions (Stamatis Eleftheriou, ERGOSE).

ETALON Final Conference finalized with  a proactive and instructive dialogue between the participants and the consortium where the results, upcoming activities and potential collaboration with new initiatives/alternatives were discussed together. Conclusions & Main Achievements of the project were highlighted by Daniele Trentini.

Click here to download Presentations

Stakeholders Meeting-On-board Train Integrity (OTI) prototype January 2020 Turin

On 28^th January the Etalon consortium organized a Stakeholders meeting to present the main achievements, results and exported issues for future results exploitation of OTI prototype. In addition, a demonstration in a Car park was shown to demonstrate the wagon permutation and main functionality of the OTI communication system. The event gather Etalon partners involved in OTI workstream and main representatives of X2Rail2 partners involved in the T.D2.5 Train Integrity.

The event was organized in two sessions; the first one dedicated to the presentation of the main results of the OTI prototype (Energy harvesting and communication prototype) and the second one to the demonstration of the OTI communication system. During the Car Park texts all the functionality of the OTI communication system was demonstrated including the latest development of the wagon permutation. All the participants could check the good performance of the prototypes through the proposal of challenging use cases.

Relevant Environment Test November 2019 Athens

During the time from 13^th to 14^th November thetests in relevant environment took place at the Thriasio Freight Centre inAthens, Greece. Both the OTI vibration energy harvested and the communicationsystem were tested. A previous assembling of the nodes for both system wasrequested. All tests identified in the scenarios were performed with goodresults. All the description of the tests together with the results andconclusions of the analysis are included in the public deliverable D5.2.

Controlled Environment Test April 2019 Barrow Hill

During the time from 17^th to 18^th April the tests in controlled environment took place in Barrow Hill Roundhouse Railway Centre (Chesterfield, UK) using static vehicles and low speed train movements.This site is an active railway depot with a maximum line speed of 16km/h within the yard area and 32km/h outside the yard area. It has a number of different sections of line that were available to represent a range of conditions found in the railway environment. One location used was in the yard area with other trains flanking the test train, and the other was an open field site with only the track with the test train on it running through fields on one side and woodland on the other.

The performed tests demonstrated that all OTI communication nodes were recognized by the Control Module in laboratory and control environment conditions. The loss of integrity was detected in real train after installing the nodes into the wagons and locomotive and detaching two consequently wagons.  In this detachment process, the measure of the distance between the wagons using the OTI nodes has also been tested with good results. A room for improvement has been detected in the Network Discovery at the starting of mission.

Consumption Tests February 2019 Southampton (Perpetuum Premises)

During two days the foreseen consumption tests in the scope of WP5 took place in Southampton at Perpetuum premises. The Power Consumption tests were planned for and carried out at Perpetuum’s premises where there was access to controllable electro-mechanical shakers and precise power delivery and measurement equipment.

The main intention of these tests had been to confirm that the Wireless Sensor Network met the power consumption requirements and therefore it could be powered from the Vibration Energy Harvester and Power Management circuitry prototype.

The performed tests demonstrated that with design available at that time a Wireless Sensor Network could sustain OTI activities with a 5 second update rate when powered from the energy harvester with a simulated train speed of 80kph (50mph) or above.

KOM (19 Sept Brussels)

ETALON (Energy Harvesting for Signalling and Communication Systems) project kick-off event was held on Tuesday, 19 September, in Brussels. The event gathered all the project consortium members and the coordinators of IP2 complementary projects (X2Rail1 and X2RAIL2).

Philippe Citroën, UNIFE Director General, welcomed the participants and emphasized the importance of ETALON project within Shift2Rail program. Etalon will contribute to the success of the program and their main objectives throughout the improvement of the state of the art of rail technologies.

Being the first physical meeting with all partners participation, the kick off meeting was dedicated to present the working plan and schedule of Etalon’s work packages and to anticipate possible risks for the project. Due to IP2 complementary projects coordinators participation, a framework of collaboration was stablished fostering the cooperation between projects.

Contact: Jose Bertolin