Development of an autonomous mobile surveillance system using a RTK-GPS

Abstract

This paper describes an autonomous mobile surveillance system used in a factory premises with some high-rise buildings. This system consists of a wireless LAN network, a base station and an autonomous vehicle. The vehicle is equipped with a GPS/INS navigation system using a Real-Time Kinematic GPS (RTK-GPS), an Area Laser Radar (ALR), a slaved camera, and an Omni-Directional Vision (ODV) sensor for surveillance and reconnaissance. The vehicle switches control modes according to the vehicle navigation error and obstacles on the planned route. It has three guidance modes, which are "Normal", "Road tracking", and "Crossing recognition". A field test reveals that the vehicle can track the planned path within 0.10[m] accuracy at straight paths and within 0.25[m] for curved paths even if RTK fixed solutions are not available. Field experiments and analyses have proved that the proposed system can provide sufficient navigation and guidance performance under poor satellite geometry and visibility, and that the panorama image database with absolute position is useful for surveillance.