Multi-Robot Cooperative Multi-Area Coverage Based on Circular Coding Genetic Algorithm

Abstract

This paper studies the cooperative multi-area coverage problem with obstacles, which requires a group of robots to cover an area while avoiding collisions. This problem is very common in scenarios such as garbage removal, mine clearance, and regional information collection. The currently proposed algorithms usually have the problem of high redundancy and weak scene scalability. This paper designs a cooperative area coverage algorithm for multiple robots. First, a set of rules is proposed to divide the area to be covered into several small areas. Then, a genetic algorithm based on circular coding is designed to allocate these divided areas to several robots. Finally, the coverage path of the robot is designed using the zigzag method, so that the robot can cover the area allocated to it. Through computational experiments, it has been verified that this algorithm has efficiency advantages over state-of-the-art algorithms in certain scenarios and has scalability for different scenarios.