Insider's Made in the Midlands Awards celebrate the products, innovations and ideas from the region's manufacturers over the past year.
The winning project brings together TrainFX’s industry experience and Loughborough’s AI expertise to develop real-time railway capacity insights and intelligent passenger information systems using state-of-the-art AI and computer vision. This work is funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership between Loughborough University and TrainFX Ltd.
At its core, the collaboration addresses a long-standing challenge in rail operations: accurately understanding passenger distribution and train capacity at individual carriage level in highly dynamic, crowded environments. While operators may have overall passenger numbers or ticketing data, this often does not show exactly how passengers are distributed across each carriage in real time. Traditional systems often rely on delayed or incomplete data, limiting their usefulness for both operational decision-making and passenger communication.
Professor Baihua Li at Loughborough University stated: “To overcome these limitations, the project introduces a next-generation AI-powered computer vision technology for a passenger flow monitoring system, embedded directly within TrainFX’s Smart Passenger Information System (Smart-PIS)”. Unlike conventional approaches, the embedded AI models process video data onboard trains in real time, enabling immediate insights without reliance on cloud-based processing. This edge-based architecture significantly reduces latency and ensures robust performance and accuracy even in connectivity-constrained environments.
Qingsong Han, Managing Director at TrainFX, said: “We’re really delighted to receive this award. It means a lot to the whole team and reflects the hard work that everyone has put in. We’ve had a very successful collaboration with Loughborough University, and together we share the same goal: to develop technology that makes a real difference for passengers and operators.”
This recognition highlights not only robust AI technological innovation in complex transport environments but also the project’s tangible impact on improving operational efficiency, enhancing passenger experience, and supporting the future of intelligent, data-driven ecosystems in transport.
The project is led by the Loughborough AI team in the Department of Computer Science: Prof. Baihua Li, Prof. Qinggang Meng, Dr Mohamad Saada, and Dr Haibin Cai. Dr Sajanraj T. Dharmarajan, Mr Muneeb Ahmed and Dr Yixiao Zhang are Research Associates working on the project. The team acknowledge the contributions and strong support of Managing Director Hansoon Han and Assistant General Manager Dr Qun Zhu from TrainFX.