STOP

Over the past years, the private security sector in Europe has been growing, representing an annual turnover of about 35 billion euros. This growth makes this sector as a market with potential to be exploited in an innovative technological perspective. On the other hand, security tasks are monotonous, repetitive, have low value-added for humans, and can be potentially dangerous in some scenarios, thus presenting a high potential for human agents to be replaced by robots. The STOP project presents the implementation of a new technology in the development of novel surveillance systems, with prospects of technical and economic feasibility and conditions of replicability, by exploiting the knowledge associated with new robotic technologies. The project, called Cooperative Robotic Securities ("Seguranças robóTicos coOPerativos" in Portuguese, or STOP), follows the research promoted at the University of Coimbra by the Institute of Systems and Robotics (ISR-UC), in order to demonstrate, through the start-up company Ingeniarius, the economic and technical advantages associated with cooperative multi-robot patrolling. Such evidences will be put in place by the Technological Center of Ceramics and Glass (CTCV), before a specialized audience (e.g., security teams), and in real situations (e.g., surveillance of buildings), validating the scientific methodologies developed in a technological perspective for commercial value. The STOP project aims at implementing several scientific contributions within distributed multi-robot patrolling and the development of innovative technical features in order to adapt the robotic system to real scenarios, namely the automatic perception of abnormal situations, as well as the resilient operation during long periods of time.