Distributed Coverage Control for Robotic Systems Employing On-Board Sensors

In this study, we introduce a coverage control strategy for coordinating a fleet of autonomous robots. Many existing approaches in the literature rely on extensive computations and environment partitioning, which necessitate complete knowledge of the environment and the robots’ positions for achieving optimal coverage. In contrast, our paper presents a control methodology based on the principles outlined in [1], focusing on a local partitioning of the environment corresponding to each robot’s sensing area. This methodology exclusively leverages locally acquired information, ensuring optimal coverage without the need for inter-robot communication. We demonstrate how this approach enables a group of robots to achieve optimal coverage while relying solely on locally sensed data, eliminating the necessity for global information sharing. We validate this methodology through simulations and real-world experiments conducted with a group of mobile robots equipped with LiDAR sensors.