MARVIN: Mobile Autonomous Robot for Video Surveillance Networks

The use of automated surveillance systems is common in several application domains, from transport and commerce to military. Surveillance systems evolved through the years: first and second generation systems use fixed or semi-mobile cameras, while third generation systems make use of autonomous robots. This way intelligent surveillance systems turn into distributed systems, and their configuration can vary to take into account particular environmental conditions or to compensate for one or more malfunctioning sensors. This paper describes MARVIN, a mobile autonomous robot to be used in a video surveillance system. Using well-established face-detection and face-recognition methods, MARVIN can track and follow human faces in the monitored environment. This paper proposes also an experimental evaluation of the real-time performances of the system, under conditions specified in a well-defined reference scenario.