Approximate Environment Decompositions for Robot Coverage Planning using Submodular Set Cover

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Ramesh, Megnath, Imeson, Frank, Fidan, Baris, Smith, Stephen L.
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Ramesh, Megnath
Imeson, Frank
Fidan, Baris
Smith, Stephen L.
author_facet Ramesh, Megnath
Imeson, Frank
Fidan, Baris
Smith, Stephen L.
contents In this paper, we investigate the problem of decomposing 2D environments for robot coverage planning. Coverage path planning (CPP) involves computing a cost-minimizing path for a robot equipped with a coverage or sensing tool so that the tool visits all points in the environment. CPP is an NP-Hard problem, so existing approaches simplify the problem by decomposing the environment into the minimum number of sectors. Sectors are sub-regions of the environment that can each be covered using a lawnmower path (i.e., along parallel straight-line paths) oriented at an angle. However, traditional methods either limit the coverage orientations to be axis-parallel (horizontal/vertical) or provide no guarantees on the number of sectors in the decomposition. We introduce an approach to decompose the environment into possibly overlapping rectangular sectors. We provide an approximation guarantee on the number of sectors computed using our approach for a given environment. We do this by leveraging the submodular property of the sector coverage function, which enables us to formulate the decomposition problem as a submodular set cover (SSC) problem with well-known approximation guarantees for the greedy algorithm. Our approach improves upon existing coverage planning methods, as demonstrated through an evaluation using maps of complex real-world environments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_03120
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Approximate Environment Decompositions for Robot Coverage Planning using Submodular Set Cover
Ramesh, Megnath
Imeson, Frank
Fidan, Baris
Smith, Stephen L.
Robotics
In this paper, we investigate the problem of decomposing 2D environments for robot coverage planning. Coverage path planning (CPP) involves computing a cost-minimizing path for a robot equipped with a coverage or sensing tool so that the tool visits all points in the environment. CPP is an NP-Hard problem, so existing approaches simplify the problem by decomposing the environment into the minimum number of sectors. Sectors are sub-regions of the environment that can each be covered using a lawnmower path (i.e., along parallel straight-line paths) oriented at an angle. However, traditional methods either limit the coverage orientations to be axis-parallel (horizontal/vertical) or provide no guarantees on the number of sectors in the decomposition. We introduce an approach to decompose the environment into possibly overlapping rectangular sectors. We provide an approximation guarantee on the number of sectors computed using our approach for a given environment. We do this by leveraging the submodular property of the sector coverage function, which enables us to formulate the decomposition problem as a submodular set cover (SSC) problem with well-known approximation guarantees for the greedy algorithm. Our approach improves upon existing coverage planning methods, as demonstrated through an evaluation using maps of complex real-world environments.
title Approximate Environment Decompositions for Robot Coverage Planning using Submodular Set Cover
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.03120