Coverage Path Planning H. Choset Coverage is the determination of a path that a robot must follow such that the robot passes over every point in the environment. Previous work includes the development of a new classical motion planning technique termed the Boustrophedon Cellular Decomposition. In this approach, the robot's free space is broken down into simple subregions termed cells. Once each cell is covered, the entire environment is covered. Applications include snow removal, vacuum cleaning, mine inspection, and surface inspection.
Future work considers surface inspection, such as the hulls of ships.
Visibility H. Choset Visibility motion planning determines where a sensor should be placed to guarantee a viewing requirement. For example, a robot security guard must traverse a path such that all points in the environment are within line of sight of at least one point in that path. The roadmaps, defined above, specifies such a path. In many cases, a robot may have specialized sensor with a limited field of view, so not only does the path of the robot need be determined, but so does the direction of the sensor. This is particularly useful in search and rescue applications in which sensors are specially tuned to detect people, but have a limited field of view.