Active surveillance of dynamic environments using a multi-agent system

Mobility and multi-functionality have been recognized as being basic requirements for the development of fully automated surveillance systems in realistic scenarios. Nevertheless, problems such as active control of heterogeneous mobile agents, integration of information from fixed and moving sensors for high-level scene interpretation, and mission execution are open. This paper describes recent and current research of the authors concerning the design and implementation of a multi-agent surveillance system, using static cameras and mobile robots. The proposed solution takes advantage of a distributed control architecture that allows the agents to autonomously handle general-purpose tasks, as well as more complex surveillance issues. The various agents can either take decisions and act with some degree of autonomy, or cooperate with each other. This paper presents an overview of the system architecture and of the algorithms involved in developing such an autonomous, multi-agent surveillance system.