Cordel Group Plc announced an agreement with a major national railway in the Asia Pacific region ("APAC"). The customer has agreed to proceed with a 12-week paid trial of Cordel's forward facing video solution ("FFV"). In addition, Cordel is providing LiDAR data to evaluate other use cases such as Vegetation Management and Clearance assessments.

A Cordel Wave LiDAR sensor and camera will be installed on an in-service locomotive to provide LiDAR data and video data. Upon successful demonstration of the FFV solution, the customer intends to expand the trial into a roll-out across their broader locomotive fleet with provision for FFV on all locomotives, with a subset also installing LiDAR to support additional use cases as required. The Cordel FFV solution utilises forward-facing high-resolution video cameras, GNSS (global satellite navigation system) and IMU (inertial measurement unit) positioning to provide geo-synchronised video captures of the entire rail network.

The data is then processed by machine learning platform to automatically detect, classify and grade the captures into manageable and insightful streams of information. Augmenting this data with regular LiDAR captures enables clients to assess the condition of assets, defects and safety incursions inside the railway corridor.