Continuous area sweeping: a task definition and initial approach

Abstract

As mobile robots become increasingly autonomous over extended periods of time, opportunities arise for their use on repetitive tasks. We define and implement behaviors for a class of such tasks that we call continuous area sweeping tasks. A continuous area sweeping task is one in which a robot (or group of robots) must repeatedly visit all points in a fixed area, possibly with non-uniform frequency, as specified by a task-dependent cost function. Examples of problems that need continuous area sweeping are trash removal in a large building and routine surveillance. We present a formulation for this problem and an initial algorithm to address it. The approach is analyzed analytically and is fully implemented and tested, both in simulation and on a physical robot.

Coordinated Area Partitioning Method by Autonomous Agents for Continuous Cooperative Tasks

“…Ahmadi and Stone [3] extended their previous work [2] to cases with multiple patrolling agents. Their extended method segments the region of responsibility for individual agents, which exchange boundary information, and agents visiting a boundary region more frequently tend to take charge of the region.…”

“…ties, to cleaning and patrolling problems using single or multiple robots. For example, Ahmadi and Stone [2] proposed a method in which an agent moves around in search of events that occur with different probability. However, that study did not address collaborative movement with multiple agents.…”

“…However, in these approaches, an agent's strategy affects the other's, and this interaction makes cooperation complex. The second approach is to divide the area into a number of subareas and make each agent responsible for a different subarea [2], [9]. However, performing fair division is not trivial in the latter approach; if the characteristics of the area are not uniform and the agents have different capabilities, equal-size c 2017 Information Processing Society of Japan subareas are inappropriate.…”

Robust and Scalable Coordination of Potential-Field Driven Agents

“…Using a dedicated computer and a faster implementation, the value of h that can be addressed can be expected to increase drastically. We can further improve the performance of the system by limiting the number of cells that need to be updated whenever the potential field changes, in two ways: (i) potential propagation can stop at a certain horizon [2] and (ii) a large environment can be divided in regions [13], where each region possesses its own potential field and its own agents (robots).…”

Semi-task-dependent and uncertainty-driven world model maintenance

“…Both continuous area sweeping and security sweeping require a robot to autonomously decide where to go next. Typical solutions to sweeping problems, like (Kalra et al 2004;Ahmadi and Stone 2005), calculate robot trajectories by minimizing a cost function using expected (location dependent) rewards.…”