BA*: an online complete coverage algorithm for cleaning robots

This paper presents a novel approach to solve the online complete coverage task of autonomous cleaning robots in unknown workspaces based on the boustrophedon motions and the A* search algorithm (BA*). In this approach, the robot performs a single boustrophedon motion to cover an unvisited region until it reaches a critical point. To continue covering the next unvisited region, the robot wisely detects backtracking points based on its accumulated knowledge, determines the best backtracking point as the starting point of the next boustrophedon motion, and applies an intelligent backtracking mechanism based on the proposed A* search with smoothed path on tiling so as to reach the starting point with the shortest collision-free path. The robot achieves complete coverage when no backtracking point is detected. Computer simulations and experiments in real workspaces prove that our proposed BA* is efficient for the complete coverage task of cleaning robots.