Energy usage for UGVs executing coverage tasks
John A. Broderick, Dawn M. Tilbury, Ella M. Atkins · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2012
Proper management of the available on-board battery power is critical for reliable UGV operations. In this paper, we will focus on the task of area coverage - in which a UGV is required to move through an area and travel within a certain distance of each point - with limited available energy. We compare coverage paths generated by existing methods and generate optimal trajectories by using a novel cost function. Using an iRobot Packbot, we present results showing dierences in energy usage while following these trajectories. We also compare the energy usage of the Packbot while traveling at a dierent velocities. Our results show that it is more ecient, when traveling at a constant velocity, to travel at a faster velocity by computing the ratio of the energy used to distance traveled.