Automation of the Freight Wagon Subsystem

Abstract

The wagon as part of the rail freight system is lagging behind other vehicle classes in terms of automation and monitoring. This stems partly not only from a fierce competition with regard to the vehicle cost but also from a long vehicle lifecycle and long innovation cycles. The drawback of the low amount of automation and monitoring of the vehicle is the additional manual labour required for operation and inspection, as well as the many use cases that cannot be served in an optimal fashion. The Wagon 4.0 concept sets out to mitigate these drawbacks by implementing monitoring and automation technologies into the wagon subsystem in an economically feasible manner. Minor extensions to the rail freight systems already lead to major reductions in labour intensity and use cases that can be served in a novel fashion. This chapter introduces the Wagon 4.0 concept and illustrates the benefits based on use cases.