# A Survey on Swarm Robotics for Area Coverage Problem
## 6 Applications for Swarm Robotics to Perform Area Coverage Tasks
[80] examined that many swarm robots formulated a letter of R by using GRITSBot robots executed on Robotarium (remote access to multi-robot testbed). Robots were used for an R-shaped area coverage of the testbed, using thirteen GRITSBot robots distributed in this shape. According to [98], ten real robot-type e-pucks were used to create a collective map of the environment. The map quality is based on the individual behaviour of the swarm during the exploration. The mapping approach was used for the environment by a randomwalk. At first, each robot maps the background and then merges its map with another robot's map into a single global one. Many types of random walks were used, and their map quality was compared to that of swarm robots. The results from one of the types of random walk methods, the ballistic motion, are better for mapping in a closed environment called an arena (walls of 0.94 m in length surround the area of 2.30 m\({}^{2}\)). The arena's atmosphere comprises five obstacles of rectangular 0.02 m\({}^{2}\) or no barriers. Ref. [99] claims that the system of swarm robots was implemented for painting on the Robotarium (remotely accessible for swarm robotics testbed). The experiments illustrated that painting resources influence the resulting image. Swarm robots used nine pieces of experimental paint equipment. The proposed painting system demonstrated the motion trails of 12 robots over the canvas with an overhead projector. A human user can affect the painting output by determining the desired colour densities on a canvas area for different colour tones: cyan, blue, pink, orange, and yellow. Swarm robots work simultaneously and are distributed in a place to cover a 2.4 \(\times\) 2 m\({}^{2}\) canvas and complete six functions for the density of colours for 300 s. In the end, the integration of the colours presents a result close to the density specification of the user. According to [100], cleaning an industrial environment by using a multi-robotic dirt-cleaning algorithm requires a team of many iRobots. The experiment was performed for two iRobots on cardboard boxes as an environment. The iRobot encompasses a Hokuyo laser scanner to scan the environment and change the laser data into a two-dimensional map and a sensor of a piezoelectric that creates electrical pulses when it hits the dirt and gives a reading of dirt measurement. At first, the environment is divided into square cells, using the Grid Divide Algorithm and randomly deployed play sand as 10 g for each cycle. Then, the A* Path Planning Algorithm is used to locate the optimal cleaning path for each iRobot. These algorithms permit the robots to clean professionally, using rising vacuum motor power in an area with high dirt. The obstacles were static in this work. The results demonstrate that cleaning is enhanced by a swarm of robots rather than a single one in regard to the time consumed and battery usage. The problem of non-convex area coverage by distributing many mobile robots in the area with obstacles was addressed. Each robot was supported by an omnidirectional range of sensors of a standard radius. The swarm robots are required to move to particular locations [101]. As a result, better algorithms for robot distribution were derived for the problem of area coverage and homing. Six mobile robots, AmigoBot, and a visibility-based approach with the aggregate objective function were used. The exact position and orientation were given to robots in the beginning. Due to the non-convexity of the entire region of 8.7 m\({}^{2}\), it is impossible to cover it. Consequently, the swarm reached a local maximum where the allocated region was 5.4 m\({}^{2}\), approximately 62.14% of the total area in 40 s.  
The management system of swarm robots in hospitals has been proposed to decrease the risk to doctors and medical staff, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Swarm robots are assigned many tasks to manage biomedical waste and floor cleaning simultaneously.