Spatial coverage without computation
Anıl Özdemir, Melvin Gauci, Andreas Kolling, Matthew D Hall and Roderich Groß
Abstract
In this paper, we study the problem of controlling a swarm of anonymous, mobile robots to cooperatively cover an unknown two-dimensional space.
The novelty of our proposed solution is that it is applicable to extremely simple robots without run-time computation or storage. It requires only a single bit of information per robot whether another robot is present in its line of sight.
Computer simulations show that our deterministic controller achieves around 71-76% coverage in a test scenario with no robot redundancy, which corresponds to a 26-39% reduction of the area that is not covered, when compared to an optimised random walk.
A moderately lower level of performance was observed in 20 experimental trials with 25 physical e-puck robots.
Moreover, we demonstrate that the same controller can be used by a larger swarm to navigate a maze. The controller provides a competitive baseline, allowing a quantification of the performance improvements that more advanced and expensive techniques may offer.
Moreover, due to its simplicity, it could potentially be implemented on swarms of sub-millimetre-sized robots. This would pave the way for new applications such as targeted drug delivery.
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Physical experiments
View a YouTube playlist of the 20 physical experiment trials.