GM-VPC: An Algorithm for Multi-robot Coverage of Known Spaces Using Generalized Voronoi Partition

In this paper we address the problem of coverage path planning (CPP) for multiple cooperating mobile robots. We use a ‘partition and cover’ approach using Voronoi partition to achieve natural passive cooperation between robots to avoid task duplicity. We combine two generalizations of Voronoi partit...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inRobotica Vol. 38; no. 5; pp. 845 - 860
Main Authors Nair, Vishnu G., Guruprasad, K. R.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.05.2020
Subjects
Algorithms
Computer simulation
Cooperation
Decomposition
Graph theory
Multiple robots
Partitions
Path planning
Robots
Voronoi graphs
Multi-robotic system
Voronoi partition
Geodesic distance
Coverage path planning
Manhattan distance
Unmanned ground vehicles
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Summary:In this paper we address the problem of coverage path planning (CPP) for multiple cooperating mobile robots. We use a ‘partition and cover’ approach using Voronoi partition to achieve natural passive cooperation between robots to avoid task duplicity. We combine two generalizations of Voronoi partition, namely geodesic-distance-based Voronoi partition and Manhattan-distance-based Voronoi partition, to address contiguity of partition in the presence of obstacles and to avoid partition-boundary-induced coverage gap. The region is divided into 2D×2D grids, where D is the size of the robot footprint. Individual robots can use any of the single-robot CPP algorithms. We show that with the proposed Geodesic-Manhattan Voronoi-partition-based coverage (GM-VPC), a complete and non-overlapping coverage can be achieved at grid level provided that the underlying single-robot CPP algorithm has similar property.We demonstrated using two representative single-robot coverage strategies, namely Boustrophedon-decomposition-based coverage and Spanning Tree coverage, first based on so-called exact cellular decomposition and second based on approximate cellular decomposition, that the proposed partitioning scheme completely eliminates coverage gaps and coverage overlaps. Simulation experiments using Matlab and V-rep robot simulator and experiments with Fire Bird V mobile robot are carried out to validate the proposed coverage strategy.
ISSN:0263-5747
1469-8668
DOI:10.1017/S0263574719001127