Railway Age, 9/29/23
Brightline, Wi-Tronix: $1.65MM CRISI Grant for AI
Brightline and Wi-Tronix have been awarded $1.65 million from the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) competitive grant program for development of an AI (artificial intelligence)-backed monitoring system to collect real-time data of trespassing activity along the Brightline/Florid East Coast Railway corridor. Described as a “first-of-its-kind system,” it will collect data from locomotive front-end cameras to “guide future decisions related to infrastructure, enforcement and education.”
The first step of the grant-funded project will be to install upgraded, high-definition forward-facing cameras on each of Brightline’s 21 Siemens Charger locomotives. Those cameras will collect data that will be used to develop and train an AI model to identify unsafe behaviors around the corridor. This information “will empower Brightline to more accurately identify areas for additional community outreach, law enforcement presence or engineering projects,” the railroad noted.
