ProRail is the railway manager of the Netherlands. ProRail will set up a trial with automatic shunting together with Lineas (the largest private rail transport operator in Europe) and with Alstom (multinational company that is mainly active in the field of rail transport). They signed a cooperation agreement for this in June. Shunting is the moving of railway equipment over a short distance and at a low speed. A single movement is called a shunting movement. Shunting usually takes place on a shunting yard.

ProRail and Lines want to see during the test what it takes to have a locomotive make shunting movements automatically. These tests are done on a marshalling yard, a marshalling yard is a non-centrally operated area (NCBG) without technical security. Shunters and train drivers operate the switches themselves and are responsible for the safe movement of trains. ProRail, Lineas and Alstom see opportunities to make the operation safer, more efficient with automatic shunting. They also look at what automatic shunting can contribute to objectives in the areas of sustainability, capacity and punctuality.

In the first phase of the shunting test with cameras, images are taken of the test area from a locomotive. These images are used to teach the software to know the environment. In this way, the intelligent software can learn to recognize while driving whether the situation is as it should be, or whether there are stagnating factors on or around the track that should not be 'normal' there. In the subsequent phase, the systems run in the background and provide driving advice to the driver. The ultimate goal of this project is for the systems to execute the locomotive assignments. This trial is part of the program ATO (Automatic Train Operation). Alstom is the supplier of these (hardware and software) systems in the locomotive with which the test is being carried out.

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