Coverage Under Dead Reckoning Errors: A Hybrid Approach

Coverage is a task, where a robot is to move about a given a target area until every point in it is visited. Many efficient coverage algorithms cannot be used in practice, because they assume accurate movements by the robot; unfortunately, real robots have navigational errors. A standard costly solution is to utilize a robot that continuously localizes, so as to make course corrections. In this work we present TRIM SAIL, a novel hybrid coverage algorithm that takes as input an exact-movement coverage algorithm, and a maximal dead-reckoning error bound. It optimizes use of the exact-movement algorithm, so as to execute its coverage plan while minimizing movement and localization costs. TRIM SAIL guarantees complete coverage, even under deadreckoning errors. We present several variants of TRIM SAIL and demonstrate their efficacy in experiments using data collected from real robots.