Mobile correctional facility robots
AssigneeGlobal Tel*Link Corporation
InventorStephen Hodge
Life of this patent
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Abstract
The present disclosure is directed to mobile correctional facility robots and systems and methods for coordinating mobile correctional facility robots to perform various tasks in a correctional facility. The mobile correctional facility robots can be used to perform many of the tasks traditionally assigned to correctional facility guards to help reduce the number of guards needed in any given correctional facility. When cooperation is employed among multiple mobile correctional facility robots to execute tasks, a central controller can be used to coordinate the efforts of the multiple robots to improve the performance of the overall system of robots as compared to the performance of the robots when working in uncoordinated effort to execute the tasks.
Claims20
A mobile correctional facility robot comprising:
- a plurality of actuators;
- a sensor array;
- a memory comprising computer program instructions;
- and
- a hardware processing unit configured to execute the computer program instructions to perform a task execution method using the plurality of actuators and sensor data corresponding to physical properties of an environment surrounding the mobile correctional facility robot detected using the sensor array, the task execution method comprising:
- transmitting status information of the mobile correctional facility robot to a central controller, wherein the status information indicates a location of the mobile correctional facility robot within a correctional facility;
- receiving, from the central controller, a monitoring task based on the status information;
- detecting, based on the monitoring task, an object in the sensor data;
- extracting a feature of the object;
- recognizing an event in the sensor data associated with the object, wherein the event is indicative of impending or ongoing dangerous or illicit behavior of an inmate;
- and
- deploying non-lethal force from the mobile correctional facility robot, in response to the recognizing the event, to prevent or stop the dangerous or illicit behavior.
A method for operating a mobile correctional facility robot, the method comprising:
- transmitting status information of the mobile correctional facility robot to a central controller, wherein the status information indicates a location of the mobile correctional facility robot within a correctional facility;
- receiving from the central controller a monitoring task based on the status information;
- detecting, based on the monitoring task, an object in sensor data associated with the object;
- extracting a feature of the object;
- recognizing an event in the sensor data, wherein the sensor data corresponds to physical properties of an environment surrounding the mobile correctional facility robot detected using a sensor array of the mobile correctional facility robot, wherein the event is indicative of impending or ongoing dangerous or illicit behavior of an inmate;
- and
- deploying non-lethal force from the mobile correctional facility robot, in response to the recognizing the event, to prevent or stop the dangerous or illicit behavior.
A non-transitory computer-readable medium having instructions stored therein, which, when executed by a processor in a mobile correctional facility robot, cause the processor to perform operations, the operations comprising:
- transmitting status information of the mobile correctional facility robot to a central controller, wherein the status information indicates a location of the mobile correctional facility robot within a correctional facility;
- receiving, from the central controller, a monitoring task based on the status information;
- detecting, based on the monitoring task, an object in sensor data associated with the object;
- extracting a feature of the object;
- recognizing an event in the sensor data, wherein the sensor data corresponds to physical properties of an environment surrounding the mobile correctional facility robot detected using a sensor array of the mobile correctional facility robot, wherein the event is indicative of impending or ongoing dangerous or illicit behavior of an inmate;
- and
- deploying non-lethal force from the mobile correctional facility robot, in response to the recognizing the event, to prevent or stop the dangerous or illicit behavior.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.