From 22 to 25 September, Elemaster is taking part in InnoTrans 2026 in Berlin, the world’s leading trade fair for transport technology. Celebrating its 30th anniversary, InnoTrans brings together more than 150,000 professionals from over 120 countries.
For Elemaster, a group headquartered in Italy and present with sites in eight countries, railway is one of the most strategic business sectors. In 2025, Railway & Transport accounted for 28.2% of Elemaster’s global revenue, with technologies deployed across five continents.
The group supports the sector across the entire chain, from design to testing, industrialisation, production and repair. It is this integrated model that is now enabling frontier innovation, beginning with the way Elemaster is applying artificial intelligence in a field based on determinism and verifiability.
“The growing amount of electronics on board trains and across rail infrastructure is transforming the sector. Safety, energy management, connectivity, data processing and control demand systems that are more complex, more reliable, and built to stay operational for many years. Integrating design, industrialisation, production and lifecycle support is what makes it possible to scale new technologies in a controlled, sustainable way. InnoTrans is where we compare notes with a supply chain going through the same transition”, says Valentina Cogliati, CEO and President of the Elemaster Group.
Two decades of safety-critical engineering
Eletech, the Head of the International Design Centres, R&D division of the Elemaster Group, together with the Group’s German site in Ulm, has worked in the railway sector for years according to IRIS, EN 50129 and EN 50657/50716 requirements.
Over time, this work has included dozens of SIL2 to SIL4 projects: fire detection and suppression, wheel-slip protection and its dedicated test bench, high-voltage line monitoring for the ETR1000 high-speed train, hydrogen safety cut-off switches, propulsion control, distributed on-board data-processing architectures and automated coupler control for freight designed according to EN 62443.
These activities are accompanied by EMC and shock/vibration validation of legacy propulsion equipment. In 2016, Eletech was also one of eleven European partners in Safe4RAIL, the EU project dedicated to next-generation train control and communication architectures.
Testability designed in from the start
For Eletech, testability is not something to be checked only at the end of a project. It is integrated from the beginning.
The flagship example is the Gap Hazard Detection System, a SIL3 control unit currently under development. The system is designed to detect a person trapped in the risk zone between train and platform and to signal the danger in time.
Its architecture is redundant and dual-channel, supported by FMEA/FTA analysis, static analysis, unit testing, code coverage and a dedicated Hardware-in-the-Loop test bench created to reproduce different fault scenarios.
A chain that continues after delivery
The same level of rigour continues once a product has been delivered. In 2026, Elemaster extended its chain into the post-production phases by integrating CR&C, acquired earlier in the year and now part of the Group’s Repair Centre.
With more than 40 years of experience in repair and remanufacturing across telecommunications, energy and industrial electronics, the centre manages more than 25,000 units per year.
Its work applies the testing know-how developed during product development to identify the root cause of a fault and confirm, after repair, that the unit has been fully restored. The centre also manages component obsolescence, a particularly sensitive issue in the railway sector, where equipment is designed to remain in service for decades.
Where Elemaster is putting AI to work
Elemaster’s thesis, developed for InnoTrans, is that in safety-critical railway applications, the main limiting factor for AI adoption is not the algorithm, but the evidence.
Rail certification is based on determinism and verifiability, while AI is statistical by nature. This means that AI will enter the railway sector at the speed at which it can be verified.
Verifying a system that is designed not to answer in the same way twice requires a leap in testing: synthetic environments, generated scenarios and volumes of trials that no hand-written test case can reach.
Today, Elemaster is moving from studying this problem to designing an approach to it. The focus is on strengthening testing and repair, where evidence already exists, rather than operating the railway system itself, where verification standards are still maturing.
Eletest, Elemaster’s Automatic Test Equipment platform engineered and certified for SIL-rated boards, already applies AI analytics to test and signal-integrity data. In this way, it combines certified SIL testing with AI-driven diagnostics for railway maintenance, overhaul and manufacturing.
Meet us in Berlin
Design, testing, industrialisation, production and repair are brought together in one chain built for the safety-critical demands of the railway sector, with a clear view of where AI can genuinely fit.
Find Elemaster at InnoTrans 2026, Stand 300, Hall 27, from 22 to 25 September.