Coverage path planning under the energy constraint

Abstract

In coverage applications, a common assumption is that the robot can fully cover the environment without recharging. However, in reality most mobile robot systems operateunder battery limitations. To incorporate this constraint, we consider the problem when the working environment is large and the robot needs to recharge multiple times to fully cover the environment.We focus on a geometric version where the environment is represented as polygonal grids with a single charging station. Energy consumption throughout the environment is assumed to be uniform and proportional to the distance traveled. We present the first constant-factor approximation algorithm for contour-connected environments. We further extend the algorithm for general environments. We also validate the resultsin experiments performed with an aerial robot.