HS1 Ltd, the company that owns and operates the UK's only high-speed railway, piloted a cloud-based augmented reality digital twin to remotely monitor and maintain assets along the line. The project was funded by Innovate UK and delivered by PAULEY as lead project partner, working alongside Network Rail (High Speed), Athonet UK and the University of Sheffield's Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre. Completion of the nine-month trial was reported in April 2022.
At its January 2021 launch, the project's stated scope was to monitor the real-time performance of assets including St Pancras station's lifts, escalators and travelators, and signalling equipment along the line, with sensors relaying faults to maintenance teams over a private 5G network. By the time the trial's completion was reported in 2022, the digital twin covered a digital representation of the high-speed network's track, lifts and other parts of the line and stations. Rail personnel wearing HoloLens 2 headsets could examine every facet of the railway in close detail, gaining a real-time understanding of how assets were operating.
HS1 used the digital twin for both remote condition monitoring and staff training. Engineers examined equipment and practiced fault repairs digitally rather than needing to be on site, and remote monitoring of the track reduced the number of in-person inspections required, improving safety, cutting the resources needed for inspections and helping lower emissions on the railway.
At launch, HS1 CEO Dyan Crowther said the system would also let expert teams maintain social distancing guidelines when responding to jobs. Reporting the trial's completion in 2022, Crowther called it a success, and HS1 said it would investigate rolling the approach out more broadly, though no wider deployment has been confirmed.
