At the construction site of Qidongxi Station on the Shanghai Nanjing Hefei high-speed railway, an orange and white robot is slowly moving along the ballastless switch. It occasionally stops and extends its robotic arm to fine tune the track. On March 2, 2026, the first domestically developed intelligent precision adjustment equipment for high-speed rail ballastless turnouts independently developed by China Railway Shanghai Engineering Bureau was put into practical use on site. The emergence of this small robot signifies the most precise and tedious process of turnout adjustment in high-speed rail construction, officially bidding farewell to the era of pure manual operation and entering a new stage of intelligent construction.

Intelligent equipment has emerged

The ballastless turnout is a key facility for high-speed railway entry and exit, directly related to the safety and smoothness of train turning and cross line operation. Its precision adjustment is one of the important factors affecting train safety and ride comfort. However, for a long time, the precision adjustment of ballastless turnouts has mainly relied on manual work, which has posed challenges such as high labor intensity, multiple measurement steps, and limited efficiency improvement, becoming a bottleneck that restricts the efficiency improvement of high-speed rail construction.

In response to the pain points in this industry, China Railway Shanghai Engineering Bureau has organized a technical team to carry out independent research and development. The entire set of equipment consists of a turnout precision adjustment robot, a side rail levelness detection car, an intelligent elevation precision adjuster, an intelligent centerline precision adjuster, and a matching intelligent precision adjustment system software. It integrates intelligent perception, precise measurement, automatic adjustment, and data closed-loop, achieving full chain localization. Wang Huan, Chief Engineer of the Project Management Department of the Shanghai Chongqing Chengdu High speed Railway Shanghai Nanjing Section of China Railway Shanghai Engineering Bureau, stated that this equipment achieves high-precision control of 0.1 millimeters, which not only ensures construction quality but also significantly reduces labor intensity.

Fine tuning accuracy up to 0.1 millimeters

In practical operations, the precision tuning robot autonomously travels according to program instructions, collects real-time track data, and sends the data to the intelligent precision tuning system through wireless transmission. After analysis and decision-making, the system drives the centerline fine adjuster and elevation fine adjuster to synchronously adjust the straight and side tracks, thereby achieving switch accuracy control.

The device adopts the synchronous measurement technology of straight and curved strands, which improves the efficiency and integrity of data collection; The intelligent analysis system realizes automatic data processing and precise instruction issuance; The mechanized operation mode significantly reduces the reliance on manual experience. This means that the construction of ballastless turnouts has truly shifted from experience driven to data-driven and intelligent control. Each adjustment action is supported by precise data, and the results of each fine-tuning can be traced and verified.

New impetus added to high-speed rail construction

On site application data shows that the deployment of intelligent fine-tuning equipment has brought significant benefits: the number of operators has been reduced from 8 to 4, and the demand for manpower has been reduced by nearly 50%; Compared with traditional methods, the number of fine-tuning times has been reduced by one, and the single fine-tuning time has been shortened by 16 minutes, resulting in an overall increase in work efficiency of 126%. Keywords: transportation, domestic innovation

The successful application of this domestically pioneering equipment not only provides technical support for the construction of the Shanghai Nanjing Hefei high-speed railway, but also explores new paths for improving the quality and efficiency of China's high-speed railway construction. With the continuous deepening of intelligent construction technology, more and more construction processes will shift from manual operations to intelligence and digitization, and the construction efficiency and engineering quality of China's high-speed rail will reach a new level. On the construction site of Qidongxi Station, this tireless robot is still shuttling back and forth, adjusting not only the accuracy of turnouts, but also the future direction of intelligent construction of China's high-speed rail.Editor/Gao Xue