Climate change and an increasing urbanization requires efficient and CO2 neutral transportation. In principle this can be achieved with rail-bound vehicles but current railway systems suffer from a lack of automation that not only makes them unattractive to costumers but also inefficient in the use of the existing infrastructure. The Vehicular Applications group therefore develops key technologies that enable a higher degree of automation of railway traffic to address the mentioned limitations.

One technology currently developed is a localization system that uses distortions of the Earth magnetic field. This magnetic field-based system works also in areas of the track network in which satellite-based systems are not available, such as tunnels. The magnetic localization system exploits that ferromagnetic material in the track infrastructure introduces position dependent distortions in the Earth magnetic field. A map of these distortions then can be used to localize trains by comparing the measurements of a magnetometer to the map. You will develop an odometry that makes use of the magnetic distortions using methods of machine learning and pattern recognition.