An Autonomous Mobile Robotic System for Surveillance of Indoor Environments

The development of intelligent surveillance systems is an active research area. In this context, mobileand multi-functional robots are generally adopted as means to reduce the environment structuring and thenumber of devices needed to cover a given area. Nevertheless, the number of different sensors mounted on therobot, and the number of complex tasks related to exploration, monitoring, and surveillance make the design of theoverall system extremely challenging. In this paper, we present our autonomous mobile robot for surveillance ofindoor environments. We propose a system able to handle autonomously general-purpose tasks and complexsurveillance issues simultaneously. It is shown that the proposed robotic surveillance scheme successfullyaddresses a number of basic problems related to environment mapping, localization and autonomous navigation, as well as surveillance tasks, like scene processing to detect abandoned or removed objects and people detectionand following. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated through experimental tests using a multisensorplatform equipped with a monocular camera, a laser scanner, and an RFID device. Real world applications of theproposed system include surveillance of wide areas (e.g. airports and museums) and buildings, and monitoring ofsafety equipment