Cooperative perimeter surveillance using aerial robots and fixed ground stations*

This paper addresses the problem of border surveillance with aerial robots and ground stations considering prioritized zones. Based on a frequency-based approach and these priorities, a metric called urgency is defined to normalize all the zones and analyze how well the whole perimeter is monitored. Assuming that a ground station divides the whole border in different zones with different lengths and different priorities, a fully decentralized system is designed to minimize the urgency along the whole perimeter. An algorithm based on coordination variables is applied to compute the path partitioning strategy along each zone for the cooperation of the aerial robots. One-to-one coordination is used to solve the exchanging zones problem in a distributed manner. By exchanging zones the aerial robots enhance the full system performance following the urgency-criteria. System features and modifications to the main algorithm are analyzed and tested in different simulations.