News Release

The automated railway booking system MARS-1* developed by the Railway Technical Research Institute, originally part of the former Japanese National Railways ("JNR") and Hitachi, Ltd. ("Hitachi"), was recognized as an IEEE Milestone on May 20, 2025. This honor is awarded by IEEE "), the world's largest technical professional organization advancing　 technology for humanity, to recognize historic achievements that have made a significant contribution to society and industry (details of this recognition are outlined in Table 1).

On July 18, 2025, the Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI) concluded a comprehensive agreement with the German Centre for Rail Traffic Research (known in German as Das Deutsche Zentrum für Schienenverkehrsforschung, DZSF) at the RTRI headquarters in Tokyo to enhance future collaboration between the two institutes.

The Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI) has developed an autonomous train operation system (hereinafter referred to as “this system”) that enables trains to autonomously assess the safety along the route based on operational information consolidated onboard. This innovative technology allows for the control of level crossings and other equipment while ensuring safe and flexible train operation. This is the world’s first system that automates the entire process from stopping the train to the decision to resume operation, which is performed exclusively onboard without relying on any ground signalling equipment. The implementation of this technology can achieve labor-saving railway operation by reducing workforce requirements and simplifying operation. Furthermore, some of the elemental technologies incorporated in this system can be leveraged to enhance the safety of driverless automatic train operation and to streamline current train operation management tasks.

Two researchers of the Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI) have been awarded the Fiscal Year 2025 Commendation for Science and Technology (Research category)* by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (hereinafter referred to as the MEXT Commendation for Science and Technology). The award ceremony was held at the MEXT Auditorium (Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo) on April 15, 2025.

The Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI), East Japan Railway Company (JR East), and Sony Corporation, who jointly developed the Fare Collection System Using Contactless Smart Cards (see Fig. 1), are pleased to announce that the system has been honored with the 18th “Denki no Ishizue (Foundations of Electricity)” Award, an electrical technology commendation, by the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan (IEEJ). The award ceremony was held on March 19, 2025, at the Meiji University’s Academy Hall, Surugadai Campus (see Fig. 2 and Fig. 3).

The Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI) has developed an inspection support system using images of tunnel walls (hereinafter referred to as “this system”) to conduct tunnel inspections efficiently. This system uses AI to extract deteriorations from images of tunnel walls and identify the overall soundness of tunnels, and projects areas that require special attention and intensive investigations on the actual wall surface, thereby supporting the investigation process.

The Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI) developed its medium-term action plan, “Master Plan—Creating sustainable railway systems—RESEARCH 2030,” for the five years from FY2025 to FY2029, an outline of which is presented herewith. The full text can be viewed on the website (at present only available in Japanese) of RTRI.

The Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI) invited the French National Railways (SNCF) to its headquarters and hosted the 11th SNCF-RTRI Collaborative Research Seminar for three days, from November 6 to 8, 2024.

The Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI) held the 37^th RTRI Annual Conference entitled “Aiming for Sustainable Development of Railways —Labor-Saving and Automatic Train Operations—.” A total of 473 participants attended the conference from railway operators, government agencies, universities, companies, and the like.

The Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI) held the “RTRI Technology Forum FY 2024” at its headquarters to widely disseminate its research achievements and business activities.

The Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI) has put the signal arrangement examination function into practical use. This function has been developed as an additional function to SPEEDY, a system calculating train performance curves. Train performance curves provide valuable information for calculating station-to-station running time, a step essential to create train timetables. This examination function enables to significantly streamline the process of proposing a signal arrangement (setting block sections and determining the position of signals), which needs to be examined when planning track layouts for constructing new stations or when establishing new lines.

The Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI) developed “IMPACTUS,” a high-performance measurement system to support the estimation of natural frequencies of bridge piers. These frequencies are used as soundness evaluation indexes for one of the bridge substructure inspections.
The adoption of the dual tuning fork type crystal oscillator chip enabled the new system to reduce noise more significantly and to estimate natural frequencies more easily than with conventional systems. Moreover, the IMPACTUS sensor is smaller and lighter than conventional sensors, which provides superior portability and workability.

The Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI) won the 35th Radio Achievement Award bestowed by the Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications jointly with Hitachi Kokusai Electric Inc., Waseda University, the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, and the National Institute of Maritime, Port and Aviation Technology.

The Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI) hosted the 58^th Annual Meeting of the Subsonic Aerodynamic Testing Association (SATA) in Kyoto from June 2 to 6, 2024.

We are delighted to announce that Mr. Hiroyuki Nozawa of the Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI) has been awarded the ISO Excellence Award by ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) for his contributions to the development of the international standard for railway quality management systems.