Uncertainty-Aware Real-Time Visual Anomaly Detection With Conformal Prediction in Dynamic Indoor Environments

This letter presents an efficient visual anomaly detection framework designed for safe autonomous navigation in dynamic indoor environments, such as university hallways. The approach employs an unsupervised autoencoder method within deep learning to model regular environmental patterns and detect anomalies as deviations in the embedding space. To enhance reliability and safety, the system integrates a statistical framework, conformal prediction, that provides uncertainty quantification with probabilistic guarantees. The proposed solution has been deployed on a real-time robotic platform, demonstrating efficient performance under resource-constrained conditions. Extensive hyperparameter optimization ensures the model remains dynamic and adaptable to changes, while rigorous evaluations confirm its effectiveness in anomaly detection. By addressing challenges related to real-time processing and hardware limitations, this work advances the state-of-the-art in autonomous anomaly detection. The probabilistic insights offered by this framework strengthen operational safety and pave the way for future developments, such as richer sensor fusion and advanced learning paradigms. This research highlights the potential of uncertainty-aware deep learning to enhance safety monitoring frameworks, thereby enabling the development of more reliable and intelligent autonomous systems for real-world applications.