The New York City Subway Is Using Google Pixels To Listen for Track Defects

New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Google have successfully tested technology that uses smartphone sensors to detect subway track defects, the MTA said Thursday. The four-month experiment, dubbed TrackInspect, mounted six Google Pixel phones on four A train subway cars traversing Manhattan and Queens. The phones' accelerometers, magnetometers, gyroscopes and external microphones collected 335 million sensor readings and 1,200 hours of audio data, which were processed through 200 prediction models.

The system identified 92% of defects later confirmed by human inspectors, including broken rails and loose bolts. 'The goal with this [project] is to find issues before they become a major issue in terms of service,' said Demetrius Crichlow, the agency's president. Following the successful trial, the MTA plans to expand to a full pilot where Google will build a production version for track inspectors.

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