Unmanned Incident Surveillance With Battery-Aware UMM Dispatch
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing building management systems face challenges in efficiently and promptly responding to potential incidents within or outside a building, often requiring manual intervention and lacking timely automated incident surveillance capabilities.
Innovation Solution
Implementing unmanned mobile machines (UMMs) equipped with cameras and navigation systems to autonomously travel to incident locations, gather information, and provide real-time data to the building management system, with battery management and backup systems ensuring continuous operation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If manual surveillance and response processes are used, then system complexity is reduced, but incident response time increases and productivity decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The UMM autonomously monitors its own battery charge level and automatically returns to the launching cradle for recharging when the charge level falls below a threshold, without requiring manual intervention. This self-service capability enables continuous surveillance operations while reducing the complexity of manual battery management.
Solution Approach 2:
The system pre-deploys multiple UMMs at launching cradles positioned at different locations within the building. When an incident is detected, the system automatically dispatches the nearest available UMM to the incident location, eliminating manual deployment decisions and accelerating response time.
2Duration of action of stationary object
If a single UMM is used for surveillance, then device quantity is reduced, but continuous operation capability decreases due to battery limitations
Solution Approach 1:
The surveillance function is segmented across multiple UMMs, each with limited battery capacity. When one UMM's battery is depleted, another UMM can take over the surveillance task. This segmentation allows the system to achieve continuous surveillance coverage without requiring any single UMM to have extended battery life.
Solution Approach 2:
UMMs automatically return to launching cradles for battery recharging when their charge level falls below a threshold. The system recovers and redeploys recharged UMMs to continue surveillance operations, creating a sustainable cycle that extends the overall operational duration of the surveillance system.
3Loss of time
If UMMs autonomously navigate to incident locations, then response time is reduced, but energy consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
Multiple UMMs are pre-positioned at launching cradles distributed throughout the building before incidents occur. When an incident is detected, the system dispatches the nearest available UMM, minimizing travel distance and energy consumption while maintaining rapid response capability.
Solution Approach 2:
UMMs operate in periodic cycles of surveillance missions followed by recharging periods. This periodic operation pattern allows the system to manage energy consumption systematically, with UMMs rotating between active surveillance and recharging states to ensure continuous coverage while controlling individual battery usage.
Data Source
AI summary
Disclosed herein are apparatuses and methods for operating an unmanned mobile machine (UMM) to capture video of potential incidents, including obtaining, from a UMM capturing video of a potential incident, an indication of a charge level of a battery of the UMM, and determining, based at least in part on the charge level, whether to dispatch a second UMM to a location associated with the UMM.