Improved Roberts operator for detecting surface defects of heavy rails with superior precision and efficiency

An experimental platform accompanying with the improved Roberts algorithm has been developed to achieve accurate and real-time edge detection of surface defects on heavy rails.Detection results of scratching defects show that the improved Roberts operator can attain accurate positioning to defect contour and get complete edge information.Meanwhile,a decreasing amount of interference noises as well as more precise characteristic parameters of the extracted defects can also be confirmed for the improved algorithm.Furthermore,the BP neural network adopted for defects classification with the improved Roberts operator can obtain the target training precision with 98 iterative steps and time of 2s while that of traditional Roberts operator is 118 steps and 4s.Finally,an enhanced defects identification rate of 13.33%has also been confirmed after the Roberts operator is improved.The proposed detecting platform will be positive in producing high-quality heavy rails and guaranteeing the national transportation safety.