ANALYZING AND EVALUATING ROBOT MOTION ALGORITHM FOR SWEEPING TASK

ABSTRACT Recently, sweeping robots, such as cleaning robots for home use, have been actively developed. Most of these robots generate their motion by reactive algorithm with easy sensors mounted. However, with these algorithms, the sweeping task would be done uneven to the sweepable areas. So there are still rooms for developing a more efficient algorithm. To develop an efficient algorithm, evaluation method is in need. However, the methodology to evaluate the efficiency of state informed algorithm has not yet established. Cleaning robots do not always clean the same environment, so the difficulty of this research is that consideration of various kinds of environments is in need. We developed sweeping robot simulator to analyze the existing sweeping algorithms, and reveal their inefficient features to improve the existing algorithms. The algorithms that commercial robot cleaners install were analyzed, and those efficiencies were estimated.