Investigation of optimal deployment problem in three-dimensional space coverage for swarm robotic system

Abstract

Multi-robot systems such as swarm robotics have demonstrated collective and social behaviors in terms of environment sensing, coverage planning, decision making, and task execution. This article addresses one of the key challenges in 3D space coverage planning by multi-robots in large working spaces while avoiding critical non-trespassing zones. We investigated a mathematical approach for the optimal robot deployment problem, aiming to cover arbitrary 3D space using a minimal number of robots, provided a global map of the work-space. The proposed method is valuable in terms of optimal resource allocation while further incorporating with the emerging power of cloud computing and is a step towards optimal coordination of multiple robots for various applications. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.