For more than 160 years, Union Pacific has been building America. Union Pacific was founded July 1, 1862, following the signing of the Pacific Railway Act. Today, Union Pacific operates across 23 western states and maintains over 32,000 miles of track, making it one of the largest railroad companies in the country.

To meet the needs of consumers, Union Pacific requires experienced and knowledgeable engineers to operate the locomotives, however, training engineers on an expanding territory is difficult. The current digital training simulation requires significant time and resources to maintain and update. An expandable solution to train engineers on operating a locomotive in a variety of scenarios is desirable for Union Pacific.

Our Training Simulator Using GPS-Indexed Video trains locomotive engineers in an expansive and realistic simulation by using real-world video. Building on top of an existing training simulator, our software plays video footage from the current track according to GPS-indexed data. Engineers operate the simulation as if it is a real locomotive, improving the training experience.

Our software reads the latitude and longitude data from the training simulation and plays the real-world video from those coordinates. The video player dynamically renders the real-world footage and adjusts the video speed to match the speed of the train in the simulation. With this, the user can reverse, accelerate, decelerate, and navigate between different scenarios.

Our software adds additional 3D objects, such as weather, lights, signage, and switches, on top of the video to create an immersive and accurate training experience.

Our system uses Unity as the front-end platform for video display, with C# scripts handling the core logic and functionality. The application programming interface is built using a .NET Core and C# to efficiently receive and process data from the back end.