Cost based navigation for autonomous vacuum cleaners

Abstract

In this paper, the Autonomous Vacuum Cleaner Navigation Problem is defined, formulated, and a solution is provided. In the design of an Autonomous Vacuum Cleaner (AVC), the most critical aspect is its navigation. An AVC is required to sweep the whole environment in order to clean it, and hence, this problem belongs to a category of problems known as Coverage Problems. We propose a cost-based navigation algorithm that, at each stage, assigns costs to all the possible moves the AVC can make. These costs are based on certain navigation rules that are preprogrammed into the AVC. After all the rules are applied, the move with the lowest total cost is considered the winning move, and is the one selected by the AVC. The algorithm is tested via simulation, and the simulation results are presented. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.