A Rover-based System for Searching Encrypted Targets in Unknown Environments

In the last decade, there has been a widespread use of autonomous robots in several application fields, such as border controls, precision agriculture, and military operations. Usually, in the latter, there is the need to encrypt the acquired data, or to mark as relevant some positions or areas. In this paper, we present a client-server rover-based system able to search encrypted targets within an unknown environment. The system uses a rover to explore an unknown environment through a Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) algorithm and acquires the scene with a standard RGB camera. Then, by using visual cryptography, it is possible to encrypt the acquired RGB data and to send it to a server, which decrypts the data and checks if it contains a target object. The experiments performed on several objects show the effectiveness of the proposed system.