A Visibility-based Algorithm for Multi-robot Boundary Coverage

Abstract

Cell decomposition is often used in autonomous area coverage. We propose a visibility-based decomposition algorithm for single robot boundary coverage and a corresponding multi-robot algorithm in unknown environment. A graph data structure is exploited for completeness of coverage and incremental description of partially observed world. Visibility-based decomposition facilitates the construction of graph and algorithms operated on it. In the context of multi-robot, a dynamically selected highest priority robot is in charge of information share and synchrony through communication, polygon set operations provide tools for environmental information mergence, a distributed algorithm for multi-robot boundary coverage is proposed based on those technologies. Finally the experimental results show the relationships between robot number and traversable gate number, some future subjects of researches are introduced.

Keywords

• multi-robot
• boundary coverage
• cell decomposition
• visibility
• graph