Cooperative “Swarm Cleaning” of stationary domains

Abstract

In this work we analyze the behavior of a swarm of autonomous robotic agents, or drones, designed for cooperatively exploring an unknown area (for purposes of cleaning, painting, etc.). We assume that each robot can acquire only the information which is available in its immediate vicinity, and the only way of inter-robot communication is by leaving traces on the common ground and sensing the traces left by other robots. We present a protocol for cleaning a dirty area that guarantees task completion (unless robots die) and prove an upper bound on the time complexity of this protocol. We also show simulation results of the protocol on several types of regions. These simulations indicate that the precise cleaning time depends on the number of robots, their initial locations, and the shape of the dirty region.