Autonomous UAV based Surveillance and Security System

There has been a major increase in crimes in the residential areas. From the current pool of solutions available today, the most widely used in most residential colonies is the deployment of security guards at entry/exit points and for patrolling. Some places also make use of vehicles for patrolling

Project Title

Autonomous UAV based Surveillance and Security System

Project Area of Specialization

Artificial Intelligence

Project Summary

There has been a major increase in crimes in the residential areas. From the current pool of solutions available today, the most widely used in most residential colonies is the deployment of security guards at entry/exit points and for patrolling. Some places also make use of vehicles for patrolling purpose and the use of static CCTVs cameras for surveillance is also a common practice. Although these solutions are effective to some extent, they have many down sides to their application as well, such as, security personal are prone to errors and are not suited to cumbersome repetitive tasks such as surveillance, be it physical or through CCTV cameras. Cost is another important factor to consider here which is directly related to the number of guards on the payroll or the number of vehicles in use. Keeping in mind these issues and to further improve and automate the current surveillance and security apparatus, we are proposing an innovative, autonomous UAV based approach which will not only help make the system more robust but will also bring down the overall cost as well.

Project Objectives

To design a fully autonomous, affordable, sustainable automated mobile aerial monitoring solution which we believe can eliminate the human and technical limitations inherent to current systems deployed. Our drone will guide itself throughout a designated area trying to spot any kind of suspicious activity, say: someone climbing a wall or breaking a window. The drone will raise an alarm in the control room, alerting the authorities and having the situation investigated promptly, while also recording the incident to be later used as evidence for forensic or legal uses.

Project Implementation Method

The project will employ image/gesture processing and smart pathfinding. Furthermore, navigation would be comprised of three things: GPS, obstacle avoidance, and dynamic pathfinding. Of course, manual override will be a feature just in case the drone starts straying off-course. For pathfinding, and obstacle avoidance, we will be employing a Convolution Neural Network (CNN), a reinforced learning algorithm. The drone would periodically shift locations and charge at the charging station whenever it deems its batteries to be running low. Facial and gesture recognition would allow the drone to understand who is doing what. Our own variant of SIFT and/or SURF would suffice.

Benefits of the Project

The main benefit of our project would be to ensure safer residential areas. At the same time, we would be providing enhanced security at a reduced overall cost, all while having minimal carbon footprint. The most obvious problem in the current system is that the guards as humans are more prone to distractions and fatigue. Keeping a vigilant watch on all things, which includes every person leaving and entering the premises or all the different streams of CCTV footage, throughout their shift can be a challenging task. Increasing the number of guards can help but it is not feasible economically having too many guards on the payroll. Secondly, vehicular patrolling creates a huge overhead of procuring cars, their maintenance and their daily fuel consumption. Not to mention the noise and environmental pollution they can cause along with being extra traffic on residential roads which usually are quite narrow. For all this expense the benefit they give is pretty limited as their area of surveillance is small, usually on the street they are currently on whereas an aerial drone can cover a much larger area from a single point at only a fraction of the cost. Moreover, the static CCTV cameras planted at different locations can at times be easy to bypass as they have a limited angle of coverage. Also, the camera feed is usually monitored by a single guard on a small to medium sized screen which makes it hard to keep track of the minute things happening on all the feeds simultaneously and at the same time has the added risk of the guard falling asleep and rendering the whole system useless. Additionally, aerial drones for surveillance purposes are hardly used anywhere because firstly, the commercial drones available in the market right now which are capable of such surveillance are too costly(usually to the tune of $1500 - $3000), and secondly they have to be manually remote controlled which doesn’t bring much value to the overall solution as guards would have to be dedicated for the purpose of flying the drone, day and night, which at best, may only reduce the effort by a small bit, and would not justify the expense on the drone. And since guards would’ve to stay up all night to operate it, it carries with it the risk of guards falling asleep on the job or missing something because of the lack of focus. Overall, this solution is not refined enough and does not cut the cost enough or give substantial advantages for it to be considered as a viable solution. A solution targeted for this specific use case is needed. The proposed solution caters to all these shortcomings in a highly cost-effective and eco-friendly manner.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

Our Final Deliverable will be a smart autonomous drone which will be employing computer vision along with smart path finding and obstacle avoidance for aerial maneuvering. Furthermore, using edge AI to analyze the environment and people to identify criminal activity such as any trespassing, or illegal gatherings, or if a fight breaks out etc.

Final Deliverable of the Project

HW/SW integrated system

Core Industry

Security

Other Industries

IT

Core Technology

Artificial Intelligence(AI)

Other Technologies

Robotics

Sustainable Development Goals

Good Health and Well-Being for People, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, Sustainable Cities and Communities

Required Resources

If you need this project, please contact me on contact@adikhanofficial.com