DMRC and CEL sign MoU to develop various indigenous rail engineering & system technologies under ‘‘Atmanirbhar Bharat” initiative

Under the ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ initiative of the Government of India, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) and Central Electronics Limited (CEL) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) today for developing various indigenous rail engineering & system technologies.

  • The MoU was signed between CEL’s Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) Shri B. N. Sarkar and DMRC’s Director (Operations) Shri A K. Garg at Metro Bhawan in the presence of DMRC’s Managing Director, Dr. Mangu Singh and other senior officials from both the organisations.
  • Under this MoU, both the organisations will take up indigenous development for mutual benefit under ‘Make in India’ initiative, for the following major activities:
    • Broken Rail Detection system
    • Theft Intrusion Detection System
    • Concrete Health Monitoring system
    • Remote Health Monitoring of Point Machines
    • Multi Section Digital Axle Counter (MSDAC)
    • MSDAC with ATP to replace older technologies

  • Dr. Mangu Singh termed this development as a major step forward towards the development of indigenous technologies. 
  • He added that this association will not only achieve Obsolescence Management but will also add value in operations meeting reliability & punctuality of Metro rail systems.
  • To take the project forward, dedicated teams of DMRC and CEL will work together to inch towards the concept of ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’. 
  • Central Electronics Limited, Sahibabad (U.P) is a Govt. of India Enterprise under the Ministry of Science & Technology, Govt. of India working in the field of research and development of various technologies etc.

Recent Achievement:

Meanwhile, the DMRC on “ Engineers Day” on September 15, 2020 took a major step towards the development of an indigenously built CBTC (Communication Based Train Control) based signalling technology for Metro railway with the launch of the i-ATS, which is an important sub system of the Signalling system .

  • This prototype system as well as a state of the art laboratory for further developing other sub- systems of indigenous CBTC technology was inaugurated at Shastri Park by Sh. Durga Shanker Mishra, Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs in the presence of DMRC’s Managing Director, Dr. Mangu Singh, Mrs. Shikha Gupta, Director, BEL and other senior officials from DMRC and BEL.
  • ATS (Automatic Train Supervision) is a computer based system, which manages train operations. 
  • This system is indispensable for high density operations such as the Metro, where services are scheduled every few minutes. 
  • i-ATS is the indigenously developed technology, which will significantly reduce the dependence of Indian Metros on foreign vendors dealing with such technologies.
  • Technology systems such as the CBTC are primarily controlled by the European countries and Japan. 
  • As part of the ‘Make in India’ initiative of the Government of India, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) had decided to indigenize the CBTC technology. 
  • Along with DMRC, Niti Aayog, MoHUA, Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and CDAC are part of this development. 
  • DMRC has been nominated to lead this important ‘Make in India’ initiative. 
  • To take the project forward, DMRC and BEL entered into a MoU for development of this indigenous ATS system. 
  • A dedicated team of DMRC and BEL, Ghaziabad worked together round the clock to take this important step towards ‘Atma Nirbhar Bharat’.
  • DMRC has decided to use indigenous ATS (i-ATS) while upgrading the ATS of line 1 (Red Line) i.e. from Rithala to Shaheed Sthal, Ghaziabad. 
  • The same shall also be used in Phase 4. Some of the important features of this technology are:
    • It can work with Train Control & Signaling Systems of different suppliers.
    • i-ATS can work with different levels of technology of Train control and Signalling systems.
    • It is also suitable for introduction in Indian Railways which is now introducing Centralized Train control, on a large scale, which uses part of ATS functions.
    • Predictive Maintenance module shall also be introduced in the Phase IV corridors using the i-ATS system.
  • Another MoU was signed at the occasion with BEL for indigenous development of “Rolling Stock Drivers’ Training System” for training driving and troubleshooting skills to Train Operators. 
  • We are totally dependent on import for this. It will be a mock up of a train’s driving cab with a computer based system at the back end, where different real life scenarios will be created to train the operator on driving and troubleshooting skills.
  • The training systems, popularly known as driving simulators, procured so far are Rolling Stock specific. 
  • The indigenous system can be utilised for multiple stocks by selecting from among the options available in the database.

Source: DMRC-Press Release