Distributed Coverage Control for Robotic Sensor Networks in 3D Sensing Fields: Barrier and Sweeping Problems

A control strategy is proposed in this work to address barrier and sweeping coverage problems using mobile sensor networks in three-dimensional sensing fields. In a barrier coverage problem, the robotic team is required to form a static arrangement (i.e. a barrier) with a high probability of detecting any intruder passing through the barrier. On the other hand, a sweeping coverage problem is concerned with moving a sensor network to collect information across a specific region. The proposed technique utilizes Voronoi partitions projected on a plane which is either static for barrier problems or dynamic for sweeping problems. Distributed optimal coverage control laws are then presented to ensure self-deployment of the sensors across the sensing fields. Simulations are also provided to validate the performance of the proposed methods for different cases.