Region filling operations for mobile robot using computer graphics

Abstract

A new topic in path planning for mobile robots, called region filling, has been considered. An effective method for filling an entire region, i.e., covering surfaces or planes with arbitrary boundaries and obstacles, is presented. The use of a graph-theoretic approach to lead to a "best" path for region filling for mobile robots is developed. The path strategy was simulated with computer graphics. The results indicated that mobile robots can be useful in many industrial and other applications which require region filling, such as surface finishing, painting or cleaning, lawn mowing, vacuum cleaning, mine field clearing, exploration on land or under water, agricultural planting, cultivating or harvesting.