The dominant freight rail carrier in the US West is innovating at a furious pace.
- Union Pacific is using a Big Data technology to ensure that its trains operate safety and efficiently.
- The system is called Machine Vision.
- It's one of several high-tech innovations the western freight carrier is undertaking.
Someday soon, all our cars will be powered by electricity and drive themselves. Except not yet. Someday soon, airplanes will run on electricity and fly themselves. Except not yet.
We're making widespread assumptions about how technology will transform road and air travel, but for the most part, cars run on gas and have humans behind the wheel. Planes continue to require pilots.
But what about railroads? A system that was around when planes were a figment of the imagination and cars were called "horses" has arguably taken greater advantage of laser-radar, sensors, big data, and sophisticated programming that all other forms of modern transport.
OK, we're not necessarily talking about Amtrak or the New York City Subway, both of which are in serious need of upgrades. We're dealing here with freight rail: the movement of massive amounts of goods via railcars that are pulled by huge diesel locomotives through some of America's most empty and picturesque landscapes.
The dominant freight rail company in the US West is Union Pacific. Headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, the firm dates to 1862. But its venerable age doesn't mean it isn't relentlessly innovating.
Railroads are the opposite of Rustbelt
"We're the opposite of the rustbelt industry," said the company's Vice-President and Chief Technology Officer, Lynden Tennison.
Tennison has been with Union Pacific since 2005, so he's executive tenure has coincided with the advent of the Internet of Things — and there aren't many things that are thingier than a 4,400-horsepower diesel-electric locomotive pulling a long train of cars through Colorado or Utah.
In an interview with Business Insider, Tennison discussed one of Union Pacific's more ambitious forays into using the latest tech to improve service, safety, and business.
It's called Machine Vision, and Union Pacific developed the system in its own research-and-development lab. In a nutshell, at three locations — North Platte, Nebraska; Loveland, Iowa; and Stuttgart, Arkansas — using what Tennison described as a portal, the company can remotely scan a mile-long train moving at 70 mph.
"The system’s robotic eyesight captures 50,000 photos per second, which are then strung together to form uninterrupted 3D images of the train," Union Pacific said in a statement. Lasers, radars, and sensors are also involved, and each portal site has its own trackside data center.
"We capture a massive amount of information," Tennison said. "On a 100-car train, a few secs yields 30 gigabytes of data and 15 billion."
Riding the rails to big data
All of that information is then crunched so that in near-real time Union Pacific staffers can look for defects. If they find any, they can flag them for future, scheduled inspections that are required by regulators, or prepare a repair for a stop down the line, saving valuable downtime that would otherwise be spent waiting for parts to arrive.
The result is that rail operations are safer and Union Pacific's rolling stock keeps rolling, keeping the business on track and making sure that customers are served.
Machine Vision is just one example of how the freight company, with its expertise in logistics and ability to apply innovations at scale, is leveraging big data-technology in ways that airlines and car companies can only dream of. According to Tennison, Union Pacific plans to expand Machine Vision to 13 portals in total.
Other initiatives include putting the type of track-inspection technology that usually requires specialized locomotives on trains that are plying freight routes every day, greatly increasing the company's ability to monitor its rail network for trouble.
This all obviously requires software and engineering talent — something that Union Pacific isn't content to leave to Silicon Valley.
"We're aggressive about recruiting top-tier talent," Tennison said. The company looks to colleges such as Georgia Tech and Carnegie Mellon to tempt science and engineering graduates to take a look at working in the rail industry.
"They’re surprised at the complexity of the problems," Tennison said, adding that Union Pacific's tech-trained employees will be well compensated. Not incidentally, they'll enjoy the lower cost of living in places like Omaha.
But perhaps most importantly, they won't vanish into a tech colossus.
"You're not a little cog in a big wheel," Tennison said. "You’re part of the wheel."