Authors: Ioannis Rekleitis, Ai Peng New, Howie Choset
Abstract: In this paper we present an algorithmic solution for the distributed, complete coverage, path planning problem. Real world applications such as lawn mowing, chemical spill clean-up, and humanitarian de-mining can be automated by the employment of a team of autonomous mobile robots. Our approach builds on a single robot coverage algorithm. A greedy auction algorithm (a market based mechanism) is used for task reallocation among the robots. The robots are initially distributed through space and each robot is allocated a virtually bounded area to cover. Communication between the robots is available without any restrictions.