OPTIMIZING PYRAMID VISIBILITY COVERAGE FOR AUTONOMOUS ROBOTS IN 3D ENVIRONMENT

Wuyi Yu, Maoqing Li, and Xin Li

Keywords

3D region guarding, visibility coverage

Abstract

This paper studies the optimal visibility coverage for autonomous robots in complex 3D environments. When a robot equipped with a range sensor is sent to inspect a 3D region, we want the complete visual coverage on the entire region using smallest number of scans. The practical sensor equipped on the robot usually has a pyramid- shaped visible range with restricted scanning distance and angle. Finding the optimal pyramid visibility coverage of a 3D region is NP hard. In this paper we present an efficient computation algorithm to find a good approximate solution. Our framework allows the user to flexibly specify a coverage rate parameter to balance the percentage of visibility and the required guarding points for the given region. The algorithm is assessed in a simulated 3D pipeline environment for the detection of leak, clog, and deformation.

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