The history of the train-animal collisions is as old as a railway. Although a passing train is large in size and makes noise, animals do not consider it a danger and do not escape from the hazardous area. This is due to the fact that trains are much faster than any of the natural predators and thus do not induce the self-preservation reaction in animals. As a consequence, the animals living in the vicinity of rail lines quickly get used to the sounds emitted by trains, ignore them and cross the rails even just before the
train. They eventually recognize the danger in an approaching train upon crossing the barrier of the socalled escape distance when it is too late to run away.
NEEL Sp. z o.o. a Polish SME with 22 years of experience on the market, has developed an absolute novelty on a world scale: UOZ animal deterring system that successfully prevents the animal-train collisions. The device exploits an animal natural sensitivity to sound and just before a train approach a series of sounds stimulates animal instinct and enforces the escape reaction. The concept and selection of sounds were developed by Professor Simona Kossak, expert of mammals’ behavioural ecology. The system comprises a group of the animal deterring devices located on both sides on the railway tracks. The devices not only significantly improve the safety of the rail transport by reducing the risk of animaltrain collisions but it also does not cause adverse environmental effects in the form of fragmentation of natural habitats and allows significant savings comparing to the cost of building wildlife passages. UOZ
is a profound proof that the technique can serve not only humans by increasing their travel safety but also protect animals and sustain their natural living environment.
In response to a real market need and demand for the system confirmed by to date sales in Poland and Russia and further expressions of interests from the potential customers from Europe, NEEL is ready to size this unquestionable market opportunity with the next generation of the animal deterring system,
called UOZ-2. UOZ-2 will be operationally simplified and sophisticated technologically so that it would be autonomous from the rail signalling system and harvesting the energy from renewable resources and thus installable anywhere regardless the grid power availability. In other words, the project aims at achieving the complete autonomy of UOZ-2 both in terms of train detecting function and power supply. Furthermore, the wired communication between the devices will be replaced with wireless solutions.
The goal of the SafeTrain project is to pilot and test in real environment the autonomous UOZ-2 animal deterring system that will be integrated with the automatic train detection system. The new train location system will be based on an intelligent mechanism of listening for an approaching train, originally developed for the application in level crossing warning system. Our approach is to incorporate it into the animal deterring system in order to make it independent from the currently used rail signalling system. This will not only reduce the complexity of the whole system but it will also reduce the installation and maintenance costs down to 60% of the todays costs. The secondary but not less important goal is the development of green powering system for UOZ-2 utilising renewable energy sources to make the system energetically self-sustained. This will be of particular importance in areas where the rail lines have not been electrified. The successful achievement of the abovementioned goals will enable the company to boost their growth and create 25 new full time positions by 2022.
