A framework for cooperative multi-robot surveillance tasks

In the last years, security incidents, like terrorism, have raised new research areas focused in surveillance issues in different areas, and the automation of this task is an important research area using robotic platforms and fixed sensors. The use of a team of robots and sensors is an approach that has many advantages over a single robot platform. In this paper it is proposed a framework to develop cooperative multi-robot surveillance systems which could help in the development of surveillance platforms following this approach. A formal definition of the surveillance problem is presented. Then the subproblem decomposition of surveillance for cooperating agents is shown. Finally, a case of study of a surveillance problem is presented to show the application of the framework.