Influence of Field Structure on the Multi-Agent Coverage Algorithm on Unknown Fields

Abstract

There are a lot of researches and applications for the coverage problem of unknown fields by a robot, for example, planet exploration, mine-clearing operation. Using multi-robots for this problem we can expect effective operation. In order to control multi-robots effectively, obtaining cooperative action among robots is essential. We have proposed an algorithm for the cooperative multi-agent coverage simulation. There are three possible coverage paths: the zigzag, spiral and random paths. We have compared the effectiveness of those three coverage paths for a field where complex obstacles are allocated. The experimental results show that there are no remarkable differences of effectiveness among those three coverage paths. It is still not clear that how the shape or the allocation of obstacles affect the effectiveness of the coverage paths. In this paper we evaluate the influence of the field structure on the effectiveness of the coverage paths.