Sensor-Based Incremental Boustrophedon Decomposition for Coverage Path Planning of a Mobile Robot

This paper presents a sensor-based coverage algorithm with which a robot covers an unknown rectilinear region while simultaneously constructing cell decomposition. In this algorithm, cell boundaries are indicated by combined lines of critical edges those are sensed partial contours of wall and objects in the workspace. The robot uses the laser scanner to sense critical edges. The proposed algorithm incrementally (one by one) decomposes unknown environment into cells. The constructing order of the cells is very important in this incremental cell decomposition algorithm. In order to decide next target cell from candidate cells, the robot checks redundancy of the planned path and possible position of ending points of the current cell. The key point of the algorithm is memorizing the covered space to define the next target cell from possible cells more than one. Path generation within the defined cell is determined to minimize the number of turns because the number of turns is the main factor to save time for coverage. Therefore, the long boundary of cell should be chosen as a main path of the robot. Verification of this algorithm is done by the simulation under LABVIEW environment.