Human-robot collaboration in a Mobile Visual Sensor Network

This paper proposes and implements a framework for human-robot collaboration in a Mobile Visual Sensor Network (MVSN). A collaborative architecture for the proposed human-integrated MVSN was developed to allow the human operator and robots to collaborate to perform surveillance tasks. We successfully implemented the MVSN so the user can control the deployment of the mobile sensors through his head movement. We also explored using computer vision techniques and navigation techniques on the robot nodes to conduct active human target detection. The robot nodes, therefore, are able to detect human faces while exploring the unknown environment, and then relay the face images to the operator for target recognition. In this way, humans and robots can complement each other to accomplish surveillance tasks. Our experimental results validated the proposed framework.