The ANSER project: Airport nonstop surveillance expert robot

This paper describes ANSER, a system designed to perform surveillance in civilian airports and similar wide outdoor areas. Whereas an intelligent system - possibly controlled by a human supervisor - is able to integrate the information originating from different sources (i.e., fixed devices and sensors distributed throughout the environment) and to coordinate their behaviors in case of anomalies, the mobile robot is a significant part of the overall system: its main subsystems, i.e., autonomous surveillance, localization (performed using only a non-differential GPS and a laser rangefinder) and navigation are investigated in depth. Experimental results validate the robustness and reliability of the approach.