Surveillance Robot Using Arduino Microcontroller, Android APIs, and the Internet

Abstract

We propose a cost-effective four-wheeled surveillance robot using an Arduino UNO micro controller and a smartphone running the Android Operating System. Surveillance robots typically consist of a video camera, a GPS module, and GSM radios. Android smartphones come with excellent hardware satisfying the above needs. This can be leveraged and used to advantage through APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) provided for the Android operating system. Moreover, the cost for building said robot using a smartphone is mitigated to a great extent. The robot can be controlled remotely from a PC using the internet and a micro controller-smart phone interface residing on the robot. To capture and archive the real time video from the robot, the inbuilt camera input of the phone is utilized. The robot can be controlled based on visual feedback from the same smart phone. Four motors help achieve a zero turning radius. The camera is attached to a stepper motor which makes it feasible to capture the scene or object of interest. The captured video can be enhanced and made intelligible using further image processing on the remote PC thereby eliminating the need for extra DSP hardware on the robot.