At InnoTrans 2024, Hitachi Rail has unveiled its new AI-powered digital asset management platform, HMAX (Hyper Mobility Asset Expert), which aims to enhance how transport operators manage trains, signalling, and infrastructure.
The HMAX platform is being trialled globally, providing AI-enhanced solutions that promise significant improvements in operations and maintenance for transport operators.
This offering has been developed in collaboration with NVIDIA, as Hitachi Rail’s digital solutions will run on the NVIDIA IGX industrial-grade AI platform.
This collaboration brings advanced AI computing directly to each railway asset, allowing operators to use data-driven analytics to optimise service delivery, maintenance schedules, and asset performance.
The HMAX suite integrates existing digital tools such as sensors that remotely monitor assets. However, its combination with AI technology allows for faster, deeper, and more comprehensive data analysis.
The platform collects live data, enabling operators to make real-time adjustments to improve services and predict maintenance needs more effectively.
Specifically, NVIDIA’s IGX platform and its Holoscan sensor processing technology enable real-time data processing directly on the trains and infrastructure. This significantly speeds up the process of delivering actionable insights to transport operators. Previously, this process could take up to ten days in maintenance depots, but with HMAX, real-time insights can be delivered almost instantly.
The platform’s edge-to-cloud architecture allows transport operators to access AI-enhanced insights remotely via a single portal. Operators can use this platform from control centres and operational sites, helping them predict, optimise, and transform rail services.
“The railway, a system strengthened by the first industrial revolution, is at the forefront of the latest paradigm shift toward a digital transformation with AI. Hitachi Rail’s HMAX solution, powered by NVIDIA IGX and Holoscan, will offer the real-time computing capabilities needed to help boost the manageability, safety, and availability of rail systems to meet the needs of operators and today’s travellers.”
This development is part of Hitachi Rail’s broader goal of bringing AI into the operational technology sector, providing frontline workers, engineers, and operators with the ability to make data-driven decisions.
“At Hitachi Rail, we believe AI has immediate and very impactful applications that will make the railways run more efficiently. Our AI-enabled digital asset management is a solution for optimising customers’ rail services and enhancing railway performance. We are delighted by our collaboration with NVIDIA, which will combine the power of AI with advanced Hitachi Rail technologies to enhance railway outcomes for operators.”
