Distributed and Collision-Free Coverage Control of a Team of Mobile Sensors Using the Convex Uncertain Voronoi Diagram

In this paper, we propose a distributed coverage control algorithm for mobile sensing networks that can account for bounded uncertainty in the location of each sensor. Our algorithm is capable of safely driving mobile sensors towards areas of high information distribution while having them maintain coverage of the whole area of interest. To do this, we propose two novel variants of the Voronoi diagram. The first, the convex uncertain Voronoi (CUV) diagram, guarantees full coverage of the search area. The second, collision avoidance regions (CARs), guarantee collision-free motions while avoiding deadlock, enabling sensors to safely and successfully reach their goals. We demonstrate the efficacy of these algorithms via a series of simulations with different numbers of sensors and uncertainties in the sensors' locations. The results show that sensor networks of different scales are able to safely perform optimized distribution corresponding to the information distribution density under different localization uncertainties.