A robot on-line area coverage approach based on the probabilistic Lloyd method

Abstract

Area Coverage is a standard problem in which Robotics techniques can be applied. An approach to solve this problem is through techniques based on Centroidal Voronoi Tesselations (CVT), considering that each robot is a generator used to build Voronoi polygons. In this work, a new approach named by Sample Lloyd Area Coverage System (SLACS), is proposed that does not need of the explicit building of the diagram based in the Probabilistic Lloyd method to estimate a Voronoi polygon's centroid. In addition, it is proposed a method to close Voronoi diagrams to apply in a classic Lloyd CVT procedure. Both approaches are compared in empty and roomlike environments done in simulated tests using both Player interface and Stage simulator. Results obtained show that the proposed approach is well suited to solve the area coverage problem via mobile sensor deployment and it is a simple and effective substitute to a Lloyd CVT method.