Coverage path planning is the determination of a path that a robot must take in order to pass over each point i n a n e n vironment. Applications include vacuuming, oor scrubbing, and inspection. We developed the boustrophedon cellular decomposition, which is an exact cellular decomposition approach, for the purposes of coverage. Each cell in the boustrophedon is covered with simple back and forth motions. Once each cell is covered, then the entire environment i s c o v ered. Therefore, coverage is reduced to nding an exhaustive path through a graph which represents the adjacency relationships of the cells in the boustrophedon decomposition. This approach is provably complete and Experiments on a mobile robot validate this approach.
Another approach is the Boustrophedon cellular decomposition REF which divides the free space into cells which can be covered with vertical back and forth motions that can be connected across the cells.
Coverage path planning: The Boustrophedon Cellular Decomposition
Proceedings of the International Conference on Field and Service Robotics
Computer Science