An online complete coverage algorithm for cleaning robots based on boustrophedon motions and A* search

Abstract

This paper presents an online complete coverage algorithm for cleaning robots based on boustrophedon motions combined with A* search algorithm. In our approach, while performing a boustrophedon motion to cover an unvisited area in the workspace, the robot detects and stores backtracking points. To execute the next boustrophedon motion, A* search is employed as a backtracking mechanism which guides the robot to the nearest backtracking point. Experimental results prove that the proposed algorithm ensures the complete coverage of the workspace in the finite moving steps of the robot. Furthermore, our proposed approach is efficient in terms of the covered path length and the number of boustrophedon motions.