Autonomous camp surveillance with the ROBUDEM robot: challenges and results

Autonomous robotic systems can help for risky interventions to reduce the risk to human lives. An example of such a risky intervention is a camp surveillance scenario, where an environment needs to be patrolled and intruders need to be detected and intercepted. This paper describes the development of a mobile outdoor robot which is capable of performing such a camp surveillance task. The key research issues tackled are the robot design, geo-referenced localization and path planning, traversability estimation, the optimization of the terrain coverage strategy and the development of an intuitive human-robot interface.