Path Planning of an Autonomous Robotic Vehicle for Outdoor Cleaning

Path planning of a robot is to find a path through which the robot could maneuver smoothly avoiding all kinds of obstacles. For a cleaning robot, it is mandatory to pass through all the points in a given area or environment unlike other robots which in most cases are meant to find the shortest path between two given points. The main challenges in coverage path is the reduction of repetition rate and reducing the number turns taken by the vehicle. Minimization of the repetition rate, will lead to an increase in the number of turns that are taken by the vehicle. In the proposed method, a new algorithm which reduces the number of turns as well as the repetition rate is been developed. It is compared with one of the latest algorithm and the proposed method is shown to give better results. Obstacle detection is done with the help of ultrasonic sensors. The algorithm was simulated in Python and the kinematic model of the vehicle was developed in Matlab.