Constrained Motion Model of Mobile Robots and Its Applications

Target detecting and dynamic coverage are fundamental tasks in mobile robotics and represent two important features of mobile robots: mobility and perceptivity. This paper establishes the constrained motion model and sensor model of a mobile robot to represent these two features and defines the
k
-step reachable region to describe the states that the robot may reach. We show that the calculation of the
k
-step reachable region can be reduced from that of 2
^k
reachable regions with the fixed motion styles to
k
+ 1 such regions and provide an algorithm for its calculation. Based on the constrained motion model and the
k
-step reachable region, the problems associated with target detecting and dynamic coverage are formulated and solved. For target detecting, the
k
-step detectable region is used to describe the area that the robot may detect, and an algorithm for detecting a target and planning the optimal path is proposed. For dynamic coverage, the
k
-step detected region is used to represent the area that the robot has detected during its motion, and the dynamic-coverage strategy and algorithm are proposed. Simulation results demonstrate the efficiency of the coverage algorithm in both convex and concave environments.