There are 215,720km of rail track in Europe, of which 4,300 broken rails are found every year. Broken tracks are the biggest cause of derailments, leading to loss of life and major disruption to services. Maintenance costs for member states of repairing broken rails are around €2bn every year. With the rapid increase in train traffic, train speeds and load carried, there is an urgent need to optimise the maintenance regime and increase reliability of rail infrastructure. Overall integrity and safety maintenance costs in the UK alone are more than €2,276m in 2014, with 20-40% of that spent on tracks (€455m - €910m). AutoScan system(TRL6); an autonomous robotic evaluation system that performs rapid NDT inspection of track, accurately detecting defects, their position and size so that accurate assessment and scheduling of repair work can be made by the network operator. Current methods or rail track inspection AUTOSCAN will enable more frequent inspections of rail track which will significantly reduce lifecycle costs by enabling more efficient flaw detection and intervention. Operators will not need personnel to walk the track side, therefore improving safety. Overall inspection costs will reduce by at least 15% and probably significantly more The aim of this project is to enhance the current prototype from TRL 6 to TRL 9 and develop a system proven in an operational environment suitable for commercial exploitation. AutoScan will enable us to become more competitive within our major target market – Rail network operators and rail maintenance companies. With project development costs of €1,822,055 partly funded by company revenues, we aim to achieve a 2.3% European market penetration, with estimate sales revenues of €41M over the 5 years, with profits of €34.7M, providing an ROI of 1444%. We also anticipate creating over 50 jobs as a result of project AutoScan

By 2025 1800km of rail lines will be automated worldwide. With the increase in automatic train operation comes the need to create an innovative platform and track protection system to ensure the security of passengers while maintaining increased efficiency in public transport. According to the European Railway Agency in 2012 there were a total of 5122 railway incidents involving people across Europe of which 1016 were serious injuries, 1133 were deaths and 2973 were suicides. The combined costs of fatalities and serious injuries cost the EU more than 1.5 billion euros in 2012. SDO-MET (Metro Object Detection System) is an innovative technology that aims at helping usher in the next era in automated public transport. Our platform and track security system provides a safer, lower cost, and easier to install alternative to current systems. Using an innovative system of sensors and cameras our goal is to make metro platforms and track areas safe and efficient for users and operators of automated trains. Our goals for phase 2 are to further develop and refine SDO-MET in order to have a market ready product. Our main focus, on a technical level, will be the implementation of the two SoA visual systems necessary for SDO-MET. The potential customers are the main operators of the railway sector such as Barcelona Metropolitan Transport, Metro de Madrid and Brussels Metro with whom we currently have trade relations. Other potential customers include project engineers and manufacturers /distributors of railway equipment such as SIEMENS, BOMBARDIERS, THALES, etc. During the development of our first prototype over the past 5 years we have developed a business plan and commercialization strategy. These and other feasibility activities, along with the willingness to pay already expressed by our collaborators, makes us confident that SDO-MET has market scalability and will be successful on a global scale. The potential worldwide market is for SDO-MET is 497 metro lines (452.7 B €).