BSA: A Complete Coverage Algorithm

The Backtracking Spiral Algorithm (BSA) is a coverage strategy for mobile robots based on the use of spiral filling paths; in order to assure the completeness, unvisited regions are marked and covered by backtracking mechanism. The BSA basic algorithm is designed to work in an environment modeled by a coarse-grain grid. BSA has been extended to cover, not only the free cells, but also the partially occupied ones. In this paper, the concepts and algorithms used to extend BSA are introduced. The ideas used to extend BSA are generic, thus a similar approach can be used to extend most of the grid-based coverage algorithms. Finally, some simulation results that demonstrate that BSA performs a complete coverage are presented.