ANSER: AIRPORT NIGHT SURVEILLANCE EXPERT ROBOT

Abstract The paper describes the ANSER project, focusing on mobile robots for autonomous surveillance in civilian airports and similar wide outdoor areas. The robot is able to navigate autonomously both outdoor and indoor, with a localization sub-system composed only of a single Non-Differential GPS and a laser scanner (inertial sensors are absents). The paper shows that an augmented state vector approach and an Extended Kalman Filter can be successfully employed to estimate the colored components in GPS noise, thus getting closer to the conditions for the EKF to be applicable. The overall system capabilities are described with respect to a typical surveillance scenario, where ANSER is requested to recognize unexpected events through a laser rangefinder for outdoor security, and to consequently alert a human supervisor.