Automatic Train Operation (ATO) was the theme of the first day of the Intelligent Rail Summit in Vienna, Austria, which featured live webcast coverage for those unable to attend. The day’s proceedings were chaired by Professor Dr Rob Goverde, Professor of Railway Traffic Operations and Management at Delft University of Technology, and he introduced the morning session in which speakers shared their insights on new developments within the ATO sector.

First to take the stage was Dr Andreas Schöbel, of Algo4Rail, who looked at the challenges of ATO in the field of scientific research. Next up was Dr Roman Treydel, Lead Engineer on the ERTMS User Group, who looked at the development of the harmonised specifications for mainline ATO. The first session’s final speaker was Dr Xiaolu Rao (pictured above), Senior System Engineer and Railway Researcher at Systransis Ltd. She examined the the integration of traffic management and train automation.

‘Important building block’

Session 2 looked at Migration Strategies, with the first presentation delivered by Hans Jakob Schneider, Head of ETCS Competence Center Infrastructure Projects at Swiss Federal Railways. He was followed by Alfons Schaafsma, Advisor Innovation and Development at Dutch rail infrastructure manager ProRail, who looked at ATO as an important building block for a modern railway industry. Volker Knollman, Head of the R&D System Architecture Group for Automatic Driving, Diagnosis and Connectivity at Siemens Mobility Management.

The first afternoon session is due to focus on Safety, with presentations from Michael Meyer Zu Hörste of Deutsches Zentrum für Luft-und Raumfahrt; Richard Koch of Ricardo Rail and finally Dick Terleth & Sander van Lochem of ADSE. That will be followed by a final session of case studies, including Nikolaus Panzera of the Vienna Metro, Julian Holmes of CH2M on the ATO Lima Metro proposals, and finally Jacques Poré of Alstom Transport, who will look at the value of ATO for the future operations for suburban and regional rail lines with dense traffic.

To register for the webcast, please visit the RailTech Europe website here.