Feature Story

AFCEA West: Scorpion on Patrol

NXT Robotics has unveiled a new ruggedised autonomous outdoor security UGV at the AFCEA West exhibition in San Diego.

The Scorpion autonomous security platform is equipped with forward and rear facing cameras, employs GPS and depth cameras for navigation, and can be equipped with a wide range of sensors.

NXT Robotics founder and CEO Jeff Debrosse told Shephard that the all-terrain, all weather UGV was rapidly prototyped over a three-month period.

'The company has a background in mobile security platforms but Scorpion is specifically designed for outdoor perimeter patrols. It's ideal for providing on site security for facilities such as data centres, critical infrastructure – you think about places such as power distribution centres that are unmanned, this would be ideally suited to help prevent an attack,' Debrosse said.

The San Diego-based company is using AFCEA West to showcase the UGV's utility to the military sector, with Debrosse arguing that the Scorpion's rugged design, multi-camera use, video capture and rich sensor payload was tailored to military installation security applications.

The platform can navigate paved or unpaved surfaces as well as steep grades, and can be controlled via a mobile client or web interface. The sentry function is performed via user-defined routes and schedules.

Each Scorpion can also be automatically dispatched from the NXT Robotics' INVISN 3D security application.

'Security managers can optionally connect to the cloud-based NXT visual analytics platform for enhanced results such as hair, shirt/trouser colours, abandoned package detection, license plate recognition (white-listing and black-listing), aggressive behaviour detection as well as foot and vehicle traffic patterns for anomalous behaviour/pattern detection,' the company outlined in a statement.

Once an intruder is detected, a remote operator can also speak to the individual through the Scorpion's loudspeaker and listen via the on-board microphone.

NXT Robotics said the UGV can be employed to provide security awareness in areas that may be considered blind spots; send alerts based on object recognition; identify and alert based on human body orientation; and connect to, and automatically receive dispatch information from, the INVISN security platform.

The UGV is able to stream H.264/H.265/MHPEG/JPEG and MPEG-4 video to ONVIF-compliant NVRs and security platforms.

Return to: 2017 Feature Stories