Patrol Robot Research Articles

2-D Bar Code Technology Based Substation Patrol Robot’s Visual Navigation

The development of robot technology and AI makes it possible using outdoor mobile robots inspecting substations instead of manual work [. To solve the technical problems of substation patrolrobots navigation, a general scheme of substation intelligent inspection based on the red guide line is put forward. The 2-D bar code records main inspected equipments information, aiding patrol robot positioning navigation. The system utilizing LabVIEW virtual instrument software with IMAQ Vision module has been successfully written and related to pictures image processing, detecting and reading 2-D bar code. It has practical significance to improve the efficiency and to enhance the portability and flexibility of substation inspection scheme.

Topology-aware handoff scheme for surveillance patrol robot

With the advances in wireless communication technology and artificial intelligence, robots are gradually being introduced as a part of our life. Similarly to most mobile devices, mobile robots suffer from handoff latency. This paper proposes TASPR, a Topology-Aware Surveillance Patrol Robot, which can integrate the robotic status and topology information to assist handoff between access points (APs). TASPR uses Topology-Aware Hand-Off Scheme (TAHOS) to find the most promising AP from a list of candidate APs. When TASPR decides to initiate a handoff procedure, it analyzes moving direction, received signal strength and topology information to filter out unnecessary scannings. Thus, TAHOS has less handoff latency compared to conventional handoff procedure and neighbor graph algorithm (NGA).

WiFi assisted NAT traversal scheme for surveillance patrol robot

With the advances in wireless communication technology and artificial intelligence, robots are gradually being introduced as part of our life. Previous research proposed a SIP-enabled Surveillance Patrol Robot (SSPR), which tracks a moving object actively and informs the householder of such security alarm. However, the underlying signaling protocol for communication and data streams suffer from the network address translation (NAT) traversal problem as most peer-to-peer (P2P) applications. NAT is a commonly adopted technique to share one public IPv4 address among several hosts located behind a NAT device for alleviating the exhaustion of IPv4 address. NAT devices typically block session requests originating from outside, prevent the establishment of peer-to-peer (P2P) sessions and cause NAT traversal problem. This study proposes WANTS, a WiFi Assisted NAT Traversal Scheme for SSPR. When SSPR is activated, it retrieves the topology information from a server to choose the candidate access point (AP) for handoff. Then SSPR uses the collected network context information to assist its NAT traversal procedure after handoff. Experimental results confirm that WANTS reduces not only connectivity check delay but also protocol messages as compared to the Interactivity Connectivity Establishment (ICE), which is the most acknowledged approach to creating a session across NATs.

Research on Mechanical Industry with the Patrol Robot Study Based on the Embedded System

It is a hot topic that comprehensive machine vision and embedded systems for mechanical industry robot motion control now. In this paper, an embedded robot visual servo tracking system platform was build, which can process and analyze video images and audio data, then analysis results was transfered to the drive motor in the robot body, and realized the autonomy tracing of the mechanical robot .

SIP-enabled Surveillance Patrol Robot

Robots are gradually being introduced as part of our life. With the advances in computational power and sophisticated sensors, home safety is being ensured with the help of robots. This study proposes SSPR, a SIP-enabled Surveillance Patrol Robot which tracks a moving object actively and informs the householder of security issues for the home environment. Such a robot is equipped with a camera and is aware of session initiation protocol (SIP). When SSPR senses a moving object, it starts tracking and initiates a SIP call to the mobile device of the householder. SIP will establish both audio and video streams between SSPR and the mobile device. Thus, the householder is able to get the whole picture of the home status through his/her mobile device. With the mobility support in SIP, SSPR can switch its wireless link adaptively to another access point (AP) and the audio and video streams will continue after handoff. As a result, SSPR can complement the security routine and make a home smarter and safer.

A Fast Insulator-Contour-Detection-Algorithm on Power Transmission Lines Images

The paper proposes a novel insulator-contour-detection-algorithm on power transmission lines images. The insulator-contour-detection-algorithm will have very important academic and practical significance in helicopter or robot patrol system on power transmission lines. The physical characteristics of insulator are analyzed in detail to obtain image features of insulator, and the Hough transform based on gradient information is used to detect the ellipse on the image. After double thresholds processing to the size of ellipse, linear fitting about the center of ellipse, template matching of the center of ellipse based on hausdorff distance, the insulator ellipse is determined. The consuming time of the algorithm is about 50 to 200 ms, so the algorithm can meet the requirement of real-time system. The experiment result approves it.

햅틱스 시스템용 3D 재구성을 위한 LoG 방법과 DoG 방법의 성능 분석

본 연구의 목적은 "로봇의 시각"과 "로봇의 촉각"을 대체할 수 있는 스테레오 비전 기반 햅틱스 시스템에서 가장 적합하고 효과적인 3D 재구성(3D reconstruction) 방법을 제안하는 것이다. 삼차원 영상에 대하여 정확하게 촉감을 전달하려면 스테레오 영상에서 사물의 깊이 정보와 사물의 경계면에 대한 정확한 정보가 필요하다. 본 연구에서는 스테레오 영상에서 사물의 깊이 정보를 정확하게 얻기 위하여 전통적인 스테레오 정합과정에 경계면 추출 방법인 LoG(Laplacian of Gaussian) 방법과 DoG(Difference of Gaussian) 방법을 혼합적용하여 3D 영상을 재구성한 결과를 제시한다. 또한 어떤 방법이 햅틱 렌더링을 적용하는데 유용한 지 검증하기 위하여 연산 시간 및 오차 분석 실험을 수행한 결과, 본 연구처럼 비주얼 렌더링에 햅틱 렌더링을 추가하여 사용하는 경우에는 잡음 감소와 경계면 추출 성능이 더 우수한 DoG 방법이 더 효율적인 것으로 판단되었다. 본 논문에서 제안하는 스테레오 비전 기반 햅틱스 시스템을 위한 3D 재구성 방법은 이동형 정찰 로봇의 성능을 높이는 연구 등 여러 산업 분야와 군사 분야에 응용이 가능할 것이다. The objective of this study is to propose an efficient 3D reconstruction method for developing a stereo-vision-based haptics system which can replace "robotic eyes" and "robotic touch." The haptic rendering for 3D images requires to capture depth information and edge information of stereo images. This paper proposes the 3D reconstruction methods using LoG(Laplacian of Gaussian) algorithm and DoG(Difference of Gaussian) algorithm for edge detection in addition to the basic 3D depth extraction method for better haptic rendering. Also, some experiments are performed for evaluating the CPU time and the error rates of those methods. The experimental results lead us to conclude that the DoG method is more efficient for haptic rendering. This paper may contribute to investigate the effective methods for 3D image reconstruction such as in improving the performance of mobile patrol robots.

Development of a fuzzy-based patrol robot using in building automation system

A Building Automation System (BAS) has functions of monitoring and controlling the operation of all building sub-systems such as HVAC (Heating-Ventilation, Air-conditioning Control), electric consumption management, fire alarm control, security and access control, and appliance switching control. In the BAS, almost operations are automatically performed at the control centre, the building security therefore must be strictly protected. In the traditional system, the security is usually ensured by a number of cameras installed at fixed positions and it may results in a limited vision. To overcome this disadvantage, our paper presents a novel security system in which a mobile robot is used as a patrol. The robot is equipped with fuzzy-based algorithms to allow it to avoid the obstacles in an unknown environment as well as other necessary mechanisms demanded for its patrol mission. The experiment results show that the system satisfies the requirements for the objective of monitoring and securing the building.

Chaotic Trajectory Design for Monitoring an Arbitrary Number of Specified Locations Using Points of Interest

The design of unpredictable trajectories for autonomous patrol robots when accomplishing surveillance missions represents, in many situations, a key desideratum. Solutions to this problem had often been associated with chaotic dynamics. While for area surveillance missions, relevant techniques to produce chaotic motion had been reported, in the case of monitoring a number of precise locations no viable solutions had been proposed. The present paper covers this research gap by offering a complex methodology that involves a mixture of two types of chaotic trajectory segments, based on Lorenz and Chen systems, in obtaining unpredictable trajectories when an arbitrary number of specified locations have to be monitored. The developed path‐planning strategy produces trajectories that can cope efficiently with dynamical degradation of chaos or with obstacle avoidance issues.

Study on the Navigation of Patrol Robot of Transformer Substation Based on Color Vision and RFID

The robustness and real-time performance are of the greatest significance for the navigation of the patrol robot in the transformer substation. To meet this demand, a navigation and position approach is presented in this paper based on color vision and RFID(Radio Frequency Identification) technology. In the presented system, the position information is provided by RFID tags and navigation is completed by the extraction of guidelines. Based on the deep analysis of the advantages and shortcoming of different color space, a new approach integrating the good real-time performance of grayscale image process and rich information in color images process is presented to improve the robustness and real-time performance of navigation. Fast Hough transform is selected and combined with least square method to detect the navigation line. Experimental results show that the presented method can meet the real-time and robust demand of the navigation of patrol robot.

Divide‐ and conquer‐based surveillance framework using robots, sensor nodes, and RFID tags

AbstractSensor networks are adopted in many surveillance applications. A traditional method for such applications is to deploy sensor nodes all over the surveillance region in order to cover as much area as possible. However, this way not only waste huge amounts of money for sensor nodes and resources, but it is also unnecessary and unrealistic sometimes. It provides huge amounts of garbage in the form of dead sensor nodes and batteries. It invokes many data collisions and places a serious burden on network protocols. In many applications, we have no need to have detail on every point inside the area, but only in some critical places. For example, in a forest fire surveillance application, covering the whole forest is unnecessary and unrealistic. In this paper, we propose a divide‐ and conquer‐based surveillance framework, in which a large surveillance area is divided into small areas by critical points and critical lines. Sensor nodes, sinks, robots, and RFID tags are all used. We only deploy sensor nodes along critical lines instead of all over the region. Our aim is to do surveillance with efficient deployment of sensor nodes and sinks, and to detect, track, and even capture targets, e.g., an intrusion tank or forest fire, with the collaboration of robots and sensor nodes. We study boundary coverage along critical lines. Robots perform tasks of patrolling, handling incidents, communicating with sensor nodes/sinks, and even being capable of deploying/throwing‐out sensor nodes/RFID tags. Finally, we evaluate perimeter coverage, robot patrol routing, and so on. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Obstacle Detection for Patrol Robot Using Bumblebee2 Stereo Vision System

This paper employs Bumblebee2 stereo vision system to detect the obstacles for patrol robot in substation environment. Firstly, with the selected points in the disparity image, the ground plane is calculated by the RANSAC (Random Sample Consensus) algorithm. And then, the local occupancy grid map is built for patrol robot, and the obstacles are detected through connected component analysis method. The actual test in substation environment verified the reliability of the system.

2A1-L02 巡回警備ロボットのための赤外線カメラを用いた人間検出(ロボットビジョン)

In this research, the purpose is making system of detecting human by using the thermography for Patrol Robots. Because they have different temperature between human and the environment, we can detect human by the thermography. We found the way to decide the range of temperature automatically to clip out the image of human from the thermography. And, We suggested the way to cut the elements beside human and proved the effect by experiment.

Asynchronous Multi-Robot Patrolling against Intrusions in Arbitrary Topologies

Use of game theoretical models to derive randomized mobile robot patrolling strategies has recently received a growing attention. We focus on the problem of patrolling environments with arbitrary topologies using multiple robots. We address two important issues cur rently open in the literature. We determine the smallest number of robots needed to patrol a given environment and we compute the optimal patrolling strategies along several coordination dimensions. Finally, we experimentally evaluate the proposed techniques.

야외 순찰로봇을 위한 단일 레이저거리센서 기반 충돌 회피 주행 제어기법 개발

This paper reports the development of a mobile robot for patrol using a single laser range finder. A Laser range finder is useful for outdoor environment regardless of illumination change or various weather conditions. In this paper we combined the motion control of the mobile robot and the algorithm for detecting the outdoor environment. For obstacle avoidance, we adopted the Vector Field Histogram algorithm. A laser range finder is mounted on the mobile robot and looking down the road with a small tilt angle. We propose an algorithm for detecting the surface of the road. The outdoor patrol robot platform is equipped with a DGPS system, a gyro-compass sensor, and a laser range finder. The proposed obstacle avoidance and road detection algorithms were experimentally tested in success.

3 자유도 물고기 로봇의 동적해석 및 운동파라미터 최적화에 관한 연구

Recently, the technologies of mobile robots have been growing rapidly in the fields such as cleaning robot, explosive ordnance disposal robot, patrol robot, etc. However, the researches about the autonomous underwater robots have not been done so much, and they still remain at the low level of technology. This paper describes a model of 3-joint (4 links) fish robot type. Then we calculate the dynamic motion equation of this fish robot and use Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) method to reduce the divergence of fish robot’s motion when it operates in the underwater environment. And also, we analysis response characteristic of fish robot according to the parameters of input torque function and compare characteristic of fish robot with 3 joint and fish robot with 2 joint. Next, fish robot’s maximum velocity is optimized by using the combination of Hill Climbing Algorithm (HCA) and Genetic Algorithm (GA). HCA is used to generate the good initial population for GA and then use GA is used to find the optimal parameters set that give maximum propulsion power in order to make fish robot swim at the fastest velocity.

화력발전설비 감시점검용 필드 로봇 시스템 개발

To guarantee the safety and reliability of obsolete thermal power plants, on site routine patrol in their facilities has been done by human workers. Due to their poor working environments, however, a patrol robot system has been gradually required instead of the human workers from the viewpoint of the workers’ safety and work efficiency. For this purpose, this paper presents a patrol robot, controllers, and its control scheme. Especially, this robot system uses a line tracing algorithm, which uses a vision camera instead of IR sensors, and an RFID system for its patrol operation. We confirmed its effectiveness through experiments.

Intelligent OkiKoSenPBX1 Security Patrol Robot via Network and Map-Based Route Planning

Problem statement: With an increased demand for security and limited numbers of trained security personnel, some security mangers have a lot of ground to police and limited staff to cover it. To compensate for shortages of security staff and to reduce the stress of security managers, we have developed an intelligent patrol robot system called "OkiKoSenPBX1". The system integrates a variety of sensors to gather environmental information and to detect abnormal events including intruders. Approach: In our approach, the route planning procedure was based on determining a sequence of intermediary goal points or coordinates x and y composing the robot trajectory. Results: A qualitative running experimental evaluation had been performed on the 1st floor of the Okinawa national college of technology as a preliminary practical implementation and its real-time performance was excellent, where a student like-guard can take control of the camera pan and tilt functions remotely. Conclusion: The real-time performance of the developed system that can leave security personnel hands-free for other important tasks is an irresistible system that can be put into practical use in a public offices facility, manufacturing facilities and various construction sites-everywhere there’s a need for advanced frontline security.

Intelligent OkiKoSenPBX1 Security Patrol Robot via Network and Map-Based Route Planning

Intelligent OkiKoSenPBX1 Security Patrol Robot via Network and Map-Based Route Planning

Safe and high speed navigation of a patrol robot in occluded dynamic obstacles

It is difficult to detect all dynamic obstacles around a robot due to the limitation of field of view. Visibility information is necessary in order to avoid collisions. In previous research, we proposed a path planning and speed control scheme that could be applied to a robot to avoid occluded dynamic obstacles. In this paper experimental verifications of the proposed scheme for various environments are presented. The path planning scheme is improved by considering the robot's moving direction. Experimental results show that the proposed high speed navigation of a patrol robot can be achieved together with safety.