Overview
The RoboGuard supported remote monitoring through a mobile platform using onboard cameras and sensors. The development of the robot hardware and its software was conducted at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (AI-lab) of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) under Andreas Birk as principal investigator. CCTV systems at the time were both costly and caused many false alarms due to limited video quality. The Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC) as project partner hence investigated wavelet-based compression of digital video. The company Periphere, later renamed to Quadrox provided as third project partner expertise related to video surveillance and the commercialization of related products.
Three different prototype versions of the RoboGuard were developed during the project using among others the CubeSystem. Lessons learned from the development of the RoboGuard were later on useful for the development of other mobile robots for Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics at Constructor University, e.g., papa & mother goose and the goslings and the ruggedbot design.
Publications
[1] A. Birk and H. Kenn, “RoboGuard, a Teleoperated Mobile Security Robot,” in Telematics Applications in Automation and Robotics, Elsevier Science, 2001.
[2] A. Birk and H. Kenn, “Applying Behavior-Oriented Robotics to a Mobile Security Device,” in Advances in Artificial Intelligence. vol. 2112, Springer, 2001. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45408-X_2 [Preprint PDF]
[3] A. Birk and H. Kenn, “An Industrial Application of Behavior-Oriented Robotics,” in Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2001. https://doi.org/10.1109/ROBOT.2001.932640 [Preprint PDF]
[4] A. Birk and H. Kenn, “RoboGuard, a Teleoperated Mobile Security Robot,” Control Engineering Practice, vol. 10, pp. 1259-1264, 2002. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0967-0661(02)00088-6 [Preprint PDF]
[5] A. Birk, H. Kenn, and L. Steels, “Programming with Behavior Processes,” International Journal of Robotics and Autonomous Systems, vol. 39, pp. 115–127, 2002. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0921-8890(02)00198-7 [Preprint PDF]
[6] A. Birk, “Fast Robot Prototyping with the CubeSystem,” in International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2004. https://doi.org/10.1109/ROBOT.2004.1302539 [Preprint PDF]