The Indian Railways has always endeavoured to provide a smooth and comfortable travel experience to its passengers. In a move to increase the safety of train operations and reduce the chances of the signal failing, the Indian Railways had tried to implement Artificial Intelligence (AI) in November 2017. You can read more about that here.
On a related note, the IRCTC (Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation) has also been taking steps to improve its catering services, including bringing down the prices of various food items, which you can learn about here.
However, the complaints have not ceased, and in a bid to salvage its reputation, which has taken a serious hit, the Railways is looking to implement AI-based technology to improve its catering service.
In this latest initiative, 16 base kitchens at the IRCTC headquarters in New Delhi have been installed with state-of-the-art hi-definition cameras, which are in turn connected to monitors, facilitating AI vision detection.
The system is on-point and can track any pest in any of the base kitchens. A report of a foreign object found (if any), will immediately reach various stakeholders, including the IRCTC Managing Director.
Piyush Goyal, the Railway Minister, has been at the forefront of the push towards the use of AI. While addressing a conference on the same on March 27, he asked the Railway employees to “look and create a Railways of the future.”
The Railway Minister made pertinent points in his speech, including many that removed the fears of employees who were worried that AI would hamper jobs.
Regarding the implementation of the technology, the system, known as Obots, will detect anomalies in the catering operation, including minute details like team members not wearing their uniforms. The system will then send a report to the contractor, who will be given a 15-minute timeline to address the same, failing which a report will be sent to the IRCTC MD, according to a senior Railway official, in the Daily Pioneer.
Last year, in its report presented in the Parliament, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) had severely criticised the Indian Railways and had even gone on record to say that the national transporter was serving food which was unfit for human consumption. The report stated that there were serious issues in the hygiene standards of the food being served, and also mentioned that unpurified water was being used to prepare beverages.
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The Railways has started implementing steps to improve service quality. This latest foray of implementing AI in its catering might help the national transporter plug the hygiene loopholes mentioned above.
(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)