Railway Coal Wagon Residual Coal Visual Inspection: Data Annotation & Lightweight RT-DETR Model Development
Developed an intelligent visual inspection system to meet the practical operational needs of railway freight, enabling automated residual coal detection in open-top coal wagons after unloading, replacing manual visual checks to improve inspection efficiency. Completed full-cycle data preparation and annotation: collected on-site images of coal wagons post-unloading, built a custom residual coal detection dataset using bounding box annotation to label residual coal regions, and developed standardized annotation guidelines to adapt to complex field conditions (e.g., varying lighting and coal dust interference). Implemented quality control measures including inter-annotator cross-validation and periodic accuracy audits to ensure annotation consistency and dataset reliability. Improved the RT-DETR detection model by designing a lightweight, fast-inference variant optimized for field deployment. The model achieved a 90% detection accuracy rate for residual coal, and has been successfully applied in practical operations at Liangshan Station on the Haoji Railway. The solution significantly enhanced the efficiency of residual coal inspection and reduced reliance on manual labor.