Estimating the Coverage Measure and the Area Explored by a Line-Sweep Sensor on the Plane

Maria Costa Vianna (1, 2) , Eric Goubault (1) , Luc Jaulin (3, 2) , Sylvie Putot (1)

1 X - École polytechnique
2 ENSTA Bretagne - École Nationale Supérieure de Techniques Avancées Bretagne
3 Lab-STICC_ROBEX - Equipe ROBotics for EXploration

This paper presents a method for determining the area explored by a line-sweep sensor during an area-covering mission in a two-dimensional plane. Accurate knowledge of the explored area is crucial for various applications in robotics, such as mapping, surveillance, and coverage optimization. The proposed method leverages the concept of coverage measure of the environment and its relation to the topological degree in the plane, to estimate the extent of the explored region. In addition, we extend the approach to uncertain coverage measure values using interval analysis. This last contribution allows for a guaranteed characterization of the explored area, essential considering the often critical character of area-covering missions. Finally, this paper also proposes a novel algorithm for computing the topological degree in the 2-dimensional plane, for all the points inside an area of interest, which differs from existing solutions that compute the topological degree for single points. The applicability of the method is evaluated through a real-world experiment.

Keywords: Plane exploration topological degree robotics interval analysis; Plane exploration; topological degree; robotics; interval analysis

Domains: Computer Science [cs]

Maria Costa Vianna, Eric Goubault, Luc Jaulin, Sylvie Putot. Estimating the Coverage Measure and the Area Explored by a Line-Sweep Sensor on the Plane. 2023. ⟨hal-04336373⟩