Smooth Complete Coverage Trajectory Planning Algorithm for a Nonholonomic Robot

The complete coverage path planning is a process of finding a path which ensures that a mobile robot completely covers the entire environment while following the planned path. In this paper, we propose a complete coverage path planning algorithm that generates smooth complete coverage paths based on clothoids that allow a nonholonomic mobile robot to move in optimal time while following the path. This algorithm greatly reduces coverage time, the path length, and overlap area, and increases the coverage rate compared to the state-of-the-art complete coverage algorithms, which is verified by simulation. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm is suitable for real-time operation due to its computational simplicity and allows path replanning in case the robot encounters unknown obstacles. The efficiency of the proposed algorithm is validated by experimental results on the Pioneer 3DX mobile robot.