Abstract:
This article presents an algorithm for online multirobot
coverage that proceeds with minimal knowledge of the
already explored region and the frontier cells. It creates clusters
of frontier cells which are designated to robots using an optimal
assignment scheme. Coverage is then performed using a novel
path planning technique. Many approaches that use clustering
for multi-robot coverage do not specify strict time criteria for
re-clustering. Moreover, the motion plans they use result in redundant
coverage. To overcome these limitations, an appropriate
motion plan for the robots is chosen based on the context of
already covered frontiers. Dispersion of robots is vital for efficient
coverage and is an emergent behavior in our approach. The
efficacy of the proposed approach is tested in simulation and
on a multi-robot test-bed. The algorithm performs better than
some state of the art approaches.