Affiliation:
1. Engineering Product Development Pillar Singapore University of Technology and Design Singapore 487372 Singapore
Abstract
Floor‐cleaning robots play a crucial role in both industrial and domestic spaces. However, these robots often face challenges due to hazardous components in their environment, which can cause them to fail and prevent them from performing at their best. This situation necessitates continuous research in the field of floor‐cleaning robots. However, most of these efforts focus on improving the robots’ perception capabilities by incorporating additional sensors. Nevertheless, incorporating more sensors is an expensive solution for most cleaning robots. Alternatively, in this research, the feasibility of introducing a safe path on a predefined hazard map is explored. The proposed method aims to trade‐off between area coverage and the safety of the cleaning robot. Herein, the failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) method is introduced as a tool to classify the hazards and implement a safety‐ensured coverage path‐planning process. In this approach, the risk factor defined for a point in the environment serves as the key parameter to assess the safety of the algorithm's suggested path. To validate and evaluate the proposed method, this article utilizes the hTetro mobile robot. In the experimental results, it is demonstrated that the proposed method can reduce high‐risk movements of the robot compared to existing methods.
Reference32 articles.
1. C.Thuesen I.Tommelein M.Lepech in18th Annual Engineering Project Organization Conf. 2020 Virtual October2020.
2. Occupational hazards experienced by cleaning workers and janitors: A review of the epidemiologic literature
3. H.-Y.Park J.-M.Lee in2019 19th Int. Conf. on Control Automation and Systems (ICCAS) IEEE Piscataway NJ2019 pp.678–680.
4. R.Bormann X.Wang J.Xu J.Schmidt in2020 IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) IEEE Piscataway NJ2020 pp.1977–1983.
5. Metaheuristic based navigation of a reconfigurable robot through narrow spaces with shape changing ability