Exploring an Unknown Cellular Environment

We investigate the exploration problem of a short-sighted mobile robot moving about in an unknown cellular room. In order to explore a cell, the robot must enter it. Once inside, the robot knows which of the 4 adjacent cells exist and which are boundary edges. The robot starts from a specified cell adjacent to the room's outer wall; it visits each cell, and returns to the start. Our interest is in a short exploration tour, that is, in keeping the number of multiple cell visits small. For abitrary environments containing obstacles we provide a strategy producing tours of length S C + 1 2 E +H -3, where C denotes the number of cells--the area--, E denotes the number of boundary edges--the perimeter--, and H is the number of obstacles. Key words: Online algorithms, competitive analysis, unknown environment, obstacles.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: EWCG
• Authors: Christian Icking, Thomas Kamphans, Rolf Klein, Elmar Langetepe
• Keywords: Computational Geometry, EWCG 2000, Robot, Short-sighted Mobile Robot, Unknown Cellular Room