AUTOMATIC RAILWAY-GATE CONTROL

1.) Why automatic?

In general, Railway gates are opened or closed manually by a gatekeeper. The information about
arrival of train for opening or closing of door is received from nearby station, which results in a lot
of useful time being wasted. But some railway crossings are totally unmanned and many railway
accidents occur at these unmanned level crossings.

To avoid the human intervention at level crossings completely, we need to automate the process
of railway gate control.

Present situation:-

2.)Components
 Arduino UNO
 3x Reflective Type IR Sensor Module
 Buzzer
 PIR Sensor
 Bread Board
 L293D Motor Driver Module
 60 rpm Motor
 11.1V Battery
 1 Red and 1 Green LED
 Jumper Wires

4.)Principal Operation
The principle of operation behind the working of this project lies in the functioning of IR Sensor. A Reflective
type IR Sensor is used in this project.

In Reflective Type IR Sensor, the IR transmitter and receiver are placed side by side. When there is no
obstacle in front of the sensor, the IR rays transmitted by the IR Transmitter will travel undetected as there
are no rays falling on the IR Receiver.

If there is an obstacle in front of the IR Transmitter and Receiver pair, the IR Rays gets reflected off from the
surface of the obstacle and are incident on the IR Receiver.

This setup can be configured to detect an object like a Train and in turn can be used to switch ON or OFF the
loads like motors with the help of a microcontroller.
5.)Working
 Practically, the two IR sensors are placed at left and right side of the railway gate. The distance between the
two IR sensors is dependent on the length of the train.

 Now we’ll see how this circuit actually works in real time.

 If the sensor 3 detects the arrival of the train, microcontroller starts the motor with the help of motor driver in
order to close the gate.
 The gate remains closed as the train passes the crossing.

 When the train crosses the gate and reaches the second sensor, it detects the train and the microcontroller
opens the gate.

 Besides that, before the sensors 3 and 2, we have added another sensor 1, which is programmed to work
with a buzzer to act as warning for the people to clear the track.

 If due to some reason the track could not be cleared, we have installed a PIR sensor at the crossing, which
detects any kind of movement in its vicinity, lighting up a red colour LED in case of any movement so that
the driver would stop the train, otherwise the signal would be green and the train will proceed.

6.)Advantages and Applications

 An Automatic Railway Gate Control is implemented with very simple hardware and easy control.

 Human intervention at level crossings can be removed with the help of this project and many railway level
crossing accidents can be prevented.
 Battery, which is used to drive the motor and other components, can be charged with solar cells in remote
areas where continuous power supply is not expected.

7.)Limitations
 The system can be implemented more efficiently by incorporating more efficient sensor network.

 A combination manual wireless control and sensors based control can be used for better operation.

 Many people will find themselves unemployed, if it were to be used in the future.

 Arduino, which forms a very crucial component of this setup, is a delicate device and needs to be handled
carefully.

8.)Challenges we faced
 Our ultimate challenge was to make sure that the track is clear when the train approaches the gate.

THANK YOU!