Experimental studies on distributed control for area coverage using mobile robots

Abstract

This article examines the experimental issues associated with the area coverage problem using a network of mobile robots. The developed schemes in the literature assume an unrealistic perfect knowledge of each point-robot's position. To account for the imprecise robots' localization, the covered space partitioning relies on the Guaranteed Voronoi (GV) principle, under the assumption of uniform radial sensing for each agent. The distributed nature of the developed algorithm assigns to each robot a GV-cell which is bounded by hyperbolic arcs. The only required information for the implementation of this scheme is the relative positioning from each robot to its GV-Delaunay neighbors. Simulation and experimental studies are offered to highlight the efficiency of the proposed distributed experimental-oriented control law.