Cases
In partnership with MRS Logística, Newon supported implement a railway automation system so MRS’s trains could operate unmanned on a dam-failure security region (ZAS), where people are forbidden to circulate.
In March 2019, dams Forquilha I and III in Ouro Preto/MG entered failure risk level three. When this risk level is reached, residents living on the ZAS must evacuate the area for security reasons. ZAS include the area that the dam tailing would fill in case of failure.
Activities reliant on human presence are also forbidden inside a ZAS, including train driving where the railway intersects these areas. Due to this restriction, MRS was prevented from using manned trains for transporting iron ore from mines located behind the dam.
The chosen alternative was to adapt the operation so it could work without human assistance. MRS then prototyped an autonomous train, equipped with an autocontrol system. Thanks to its creativity, groundbreaking ideas, and dedication, the engineering team managed to test and verify the prototype in a quick and efficient way, then following with a more robust solution.
Together with MRS, Newon projected and installed the unmanned-train’s complete automotive and communication definitive system. This resource is based on a hardware system designed for railway networks, able to withstand the physical conditions imposed by this kind of operation. The platform is connected to other systems – made open by industrial protocol – through a 400 Mhz radiofrequency and a 4G LTE cell phone network, which guarantee complete autonomy.
Operation monitoring is done by an in loco industrial tablet and integrated to MRS’s control center. In the second semester of 2020, the Self-driving Train System (SLOA) was validated and installed in the ZAS restriction area.This enabled MRS to continue operations on an area where it had been previously suspended due to dam-failure risk.
MRS is the logistics operator responsible for managing a 1,643 km railway network in the Brazilian states of Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo, where about half of Brazil’s GDP is centered. The company was founded in 1996, when the government transferred control over the national railway network to the private initiative. Today MRS is one of the largest railway cargo operators in the world, with a transported volume almost four times that of the 1990s.
Almost 20% of Brazil’s exportations and a third of all the cargo carried by trains nationally go through their railroads. Their wagons carry containers, agricultural and siderurgical production, cement, bauxite, coke, coal and iron oars. The railroads MRS operates connect regions important for producing mineral and agricultural commodities and some of Brazil’s largest industrial plants to the Southwest-Region’s largest ports (in Santos, Rio de Janeiro, Itaguaí, and Sepetiba).