Spatially distributed area coverage optimisation in mobile robotic networks with arbitrary convex anisotropic patterns

Coordination of the mobile nodes for area coverage applications in a distributed wireless sensor network is examined in this article, where the nodes' sensing domains are arbitrary strictly convex compact sets, though identical among each other as far as shape and orientation are concerned. Unlike works that utilise standard Voronoi tessellation for coordination of homogeneous mobile nodes with circular sensing patterns, in this article the planar space is partitioned via an innovative way into subsets based only on the nodes' coverage footprints, rather than the nodes' coordinates. The proposed control scheme is spatially distributed, leading to a locally area-optimal network configuration, while connectivity issues are analysed via worst case scenario topology. Efficiency of the proposed scheme is further confirmed via comparative simulation studies. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.