METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF A SURFACE BY AN AUTONOMOUS ROBOT

摘要

A robot configured to navigate a surface, the robot comprising a movement mechanism; a logical map representing data about the surface and associating locations with one or more properties observed during navigation; an initialization module configured to establish an initial pose comprising an initial location and an initial orientation; a region covering module configured to cause the robot to move so as to cover a region; an edge—following module configured to cause the robot to follow unfollowed edges; a control module configured to invoke region covering on a first region defined at least in part based at least part of the initial pose, to invoke region covering on least one additional region, to invoke edge-following, and to invoke region covering cause the mapping module to mark followed edges as followed, and cause a third region covering on regions discovered during edge-following.

主权项

1. A mobile device configured to navigate a surface, the mobile device comprising
a movement mechanism configured to move the mobile device from a first pose comprising a first location and a first orientation to a second pose comprising a second location and a second orientation; a mapping module configured to update a map representing data about the surface, the map associating locations with one or more properties, the properties comprising properties sufficient to indicate “unexplored”, “traversed”, “edge”, and “occupied”; an initialization module configured to establish an initial pose comprising an initial location and an initial orientation; a first region-covering module configured to cause the movement mechanism to move the mobile device so as to cover a first region defined at least in part based on at least one component of the initial pose and further configured to cause the mapping module to update the map; a second region-covering module configured to cause the movement mechanism to move the mobile device so as to cover respective of at least one additional regions and to cause the mapping module to update the map, wherein the first region and the at least one additional regions are non-overlapping; an edge-following module configured to identify one or more unfollowed edges, cause the movement mechanism to move the mobile device so as to follow respective unfollowed edges, cause the mapping module to mark followed edges as followed, and cause a third region-covering module to cause the movement mechanism to move the mobile device so as to cover one or more edge-discovered regions if such regions are discovered.