Towards Collaborative Robots for Infrastructure Security Applications

We discuss techniques towards using collaborative robots for infrastructure security applications. A vast number of critical facilities, including power plants, military bases, water plants, air fields, and so forth, must be protected against unauthorized intruders. A team of mobile robots working cooperatively can alleviate human resources and improve effectiveness from human fatigue and boredom. This paper addresses this scenario by first presenting distributed sensing algorithms for robot localization and 3D map building. We then describe a multi-robot motion planning algorithm according to a patrolling and threat response scenario. A block diagram of the system integration of sensing and planning is presented towards a successful proof of principle demonstration. Previous approaches to similar scenarios have been greatly limited by their reliance on global positioning systems, the need for the manual construction of facility maps, and the need for humans to plan and specify the individual robot paths for the mission. Our proposed approaches overcome these limits and enable the systems to be deployed autonomously without modifications to the operating environment.