Cooperative coverage of rectilinear environments

A distributed cooperative coverage algorithm DC/sub R/ is presented, which is derived from an earlier complete single-robot algorithm, CC/sub R/. DC/sub R/ executes independently on each robot in a team where the individual robots do not know the initial locations of their peers and applies to systems of robots operating in a rectilinear environment that use only intrinsic contact sensing to determine the boundaries of the environment. Due to the reactive nature of CC/sub R/, the natural extension to DC/sub R/ preserves the completeness properties of the single-robot algorithm, and the outline of a completeness proof of DC/sub R/ is also presented. DC/sub R/ has been implemented in simulation, and directions for future work are presented which will make the algorithm more suited to physical robot systems.

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