Autonomous drone for social distancing surveillance

ABSTRACT

Drones being capable of doing things that are not even remotely possible for a human have a major role to play in our society. These unmanned aerial vehicles have endless applications in various fields such as photography, surveillance, farming and communication systems. These drones due to such extraordinary capabilities pose a serious threat to privacy of the general population. However in desperate situations privacy is overtaken by safety and security in terms of priority. In this project the application of unmanned aerial vehicles in the surveillance field are explored while walking the thin line between invasion of privacy and safety concerns. An autonomous drone with a camera module with an intelligent scene analysis model is used to automate the surveillance of vast areas in a single go while keeping maintenance cheap and operability easy. The primary focus would be to surveil the overall population for honouring the 'social distancing protocols' and then based on the results, a tool with a wider application in human behaviour analysis is to be developed. © 2021 IEEE.