Overhead contact line (OCL) is installed over long distances, so that a lot of maintenance worker is required for its maintenance. To reduce OCL maintenance works such as walking patrols and close-distance inspections, it is strongly desired to automate part of the inspection of OCL, especially anomaly detection of OCL fittings which are installed in large quantities. To automate OCL inspection, it is efficient to inspect OCL by analysing these anomalies in OCL images obtained from imaging device installed on the running vehicle instead of visual inspection by maintenance workers.
In this paper, we proposed an imaging device configuration using two monochrome line scan cameras with tilt-shift lens and near-infrared LED lights to acquire OCL images in Shinkansen speed range up to 360km/h. To enable frequent inspection, the proposed device configuration was considered with mounting on the roof of a commercial train. The imaging range was set to be -400 mm to +400 mm in stagger and 4800 mm to 7000 mm in height from rail level as the installed range of OCL for Shinkansen, taking account into the car-body tilting system. The image obtain frequency of the device was set to the maximum of 40 kHz which corresponded to the resolution of 2.1 mm in the travelling direction at a running speed of 300 km/h. Hence, the device can acquire OCL images with an image quality that enables the auto detection of anomalies of OCL fittings.
We prototyped a device according to the proposed configuration to verify its performance in bench tests. As a result, it was confirmed that the proposed device configuration ensured a depth of zone that covered the installed range of OCL. In addition, it was also confirmed that the device could obtain images of a rotating disk simulating 300 km/h running with 2.1 mm resolution and without subject blur.

overhead contact line; imaging device; Shinkansen