2D-VPC: An Efficient Coverage Algorithm for Multiple Autonomous Vehicles

In this paper, we address a problem of multi-robotic coverage, where an area of interest is covered by multiple sensors, each mounted on an autonomous vehicle such as an aerial or a ground mobile robot. The area of interest is first decomposed into grids of equal size and then partitioned into Voronoi cells. Each robot/sensor is assigned the task of covering the corresponding Voronoi cell. We propose an optimal gridding size and partitioning methodology that eliminate the coverage inefficiencies induced by the partitioning process. We carried out experiments using multiple quadcopters and mobile robots to demonstrate and validate the proposed multi-sensor coverage strategy.