Contact Sensor-based Coverage of Rectilinear Environments - Robotics Institute Carnegie Mellon University

Contact Sensor-based Coverage of Rectilinear Environments

Zack Butler, Alfred Rizzi, and Ralph Hollis
Conference Paper, Proceedings of IEEE International Symposium on Intelligent Control Intelligent Systems and Semiotics (ISIC '99), pp. 266 - 271, September, 1999

Abstract

A variety of mobile robot tasks require complete coverage of an initially unknown environment, either as the entire task or as a way to generate a complete map for use during further missions. This is a problem known as sensor-based coverage, in which the robot's sensing is used to plan a path that reaches every point in the environment. A new algorithm, CC/sub R/, is presented here which works for robots with only contact sensing that operate in environments with rectilinear boundaries and obstacles. This algorithm uses a high-level rule-based feedback structure to direct coverage rather than a script in order to facilitate future extensions to a team of independent robots. The outline of a completeness proof of CC/sub R/ is also presented, which shows that it produces coverage of any of a large class of rectilinear environments. Implementation of CC/sub R/ in simulation is discussed, as well as the results of testing in a variety of world geometries and potential extensions to the algorithm.

BibTeX

@conference{Butler-1999-15005,
author = {Zack Butler and Alfred Rizzi and Ralph Hollis},
title = {Contact Sensor-based Coverage of Rectilinear Environments},
booktitle = {Proceedings of IEEE International Symposium on Intelligent Control Intelligent Systems and Semiotics (ISIC '99)},
year = {1999},
month = {September},
pages = {266 - 271},
}