<title>Toward sensor-based coverage with robot teams</title>

Abstract

We introduce a new algorithm to cover an unknown space with a homogenous team of circular mobile robots. Our approach uses a previous single robot coverage algorithm that divides the target space into cells, each of which can be covered with simple back and forth motions. The advantage of our method is that we plan in a two dimensional configuration space for a team of n robots, bypassing the 2n dimensional configuration space. The approach used is semi-decentralized - robot teams cover the space independent of each other, but, robots within a team communicate state and share information. An implementation of the algorithm, in simulation, is also detailed.