Collaborative Visual Area Coverage
For multi-robot systems, this work provides a distributed solution to the visual coverage problem, but the results are only simulated and lack quantitative comparisons, making it an incremental contribution.
This paper addresses the problem of visual area coverage by a network of mobile aerial agents (MAAs) with downward-facing cameras, where coverage quality decreases with altitude. A distributed control law is developed to maximize a joint coverage-quality criterion, and its effectiveness is demonstrated through simulations.
This article examines the problem of visual area coverage by a network of Mobile Aerial Agents (MAAs). Each MAA is assumed to be equipped with a downwards facing camera with a conical field of view which covers all points within a circle on the ground. The diameter of that circle is proportional to the altitude of the MAA, whereas the quality of the covered area decreases with the altitude. A distributed control law that maximizes a joint coverage-quality criterion by adjusting the MAAs' spatial coordinates is developed. The effectiveness of the proposed control scheme is evaluated through simulation studies.