Short-Range UWB Radar: Surveillance Robot Equipment of the Future

Autonomous robots are intelligent machines capable of performing tasks by themselves, without explicit human control. They can find quit a number of unique applications. Here, their utilisation for surveillance, monitoring and reconnaissance in hostile and dangerous to life environment intent on human being detection and/or static object imaging is up-to-date, promising and challenging as well. The fruitfulness of this application of robot systems is determined by many factors. The effective and reliable sensor system for human being detection and localization and static object imaging under wide variety of scenarios can be rated among them. In the last decade, it has been shown that ultra-wideband (UWB) radars (sensors) can be used with advantage as day and night, and under all-weather conditions sensors for person localization and static object imaging. Taking into account this fact, this paper will be intent on the analyses of UWB sensor applicability as the part of the smart sensor systems of robots to be used at emergency situation solutions. Summarizing the results of theoretical analyses and experiments with UWB sensors presented in the paper, it will be concluded that the short-range UWB radars have the great potential to be used as a standard equipment of surveillance and reconnaissance robot systems of future.