Augmented and Virtual Reality for Improving Safety in Railway Infrastructure Monitoring and Maintenance.

The highly demanding safety standards adopted in the railway context imply that cutting-edge technologies must limit accidents. This paper presents the human-centered outcomes of the VRAIL project, an industrial research project aiming to use enabling technologies and develop methodologies for operators directly involved in infrastructure management in the railway field. Developing integrated monitoring systems and applications that exploit Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) becomes crucial to support the awareness of planning and maintenance operators required to comply with high-quality standards. This paper addresses the abovementioned issue by proposing the development of two different prototype applications in both AR and VR for railway infrastructure data management. These environments will provide the planning operator with a complete platform to explore, use to plan maintenance interventions, and gather detailed reports to improve the overall safety of the railway line effectively.