A dynamic path planning approach for multirobot sensor-based coverage considering energy constraints

Abstract

Multirobot sensor-based coverage path planning determines a tour for each robot in a team such that every point in a given workspace is covered by at least one robot using its sensors. In sensor-based coverage of narrow spaces, i.e., obstacles lie within the sensor range, a generalized Voronoi diagram (GVD)-based graph can be used to model the environment. A complete sensor-based coverage path plan for the robot team can be obtained by using the capacitated arc routing problem solution methods on the GVD-based graph. Unlike capacitated arc routing problem, sensor-based coverage problem requires to consider two types of edge demands. Therefore, modified Ulusoy algorithm is used to obtain mobile robot tours by taking into account two different energy consumption cases during sensor-based coverage. However, due to the partially unknown nature of the environment, the robots may encounter obstacles on their tours. This requires a replanning process that considers the remaining energy capacities and the current positions of the robots. In this paper, the modified Ulusoy algorithm is extended to incorporate this dynamic planning problem. A dynamic path-planning approach is proposed for multirobot sensor-based coverage of narrow environments by considering the energy capacities of the mobile robots. The approach is tested in a laboratory environment using Pioneer 3-DX mobile robots. Simulations are also conducted for a larger test environment.