Combined complete coverage path planning for autonomous mobile robot in indoor environment

Complete coverage path planning is a key problem for autonomous mobile robot, which concerns both efficiency and completeness of coverage. This paper proposed a novel strategy of combined coverage path planning method, which combines the template-based and the heuristic coverage path planning. The template-based mode allows the robot to run under some predefined motion templates which can realize the completeness of coverage, the heuristic complete coverage algorithm works out an optimal path by heuristic search that can improve the coverage efficiency. All these functions can be carried out with the low-cost general hardware : the ultrasonic sensors, incremental encoders, DC motors, etc. Finally numerical simulations and experiments verify the effectiveness of the method.