Coverage Route Planner of Ground Rovers Considering Hilly Terrains

ABSTRACT This paper considers the exploration of a ground rover in a hilly workspace cluttered with untraversable obstacles. Let coverage route planning indicate the route planning of the ground rover, so that it moves to visit all traversable points in the given cluttered workspace. The coverage route planner is required for performing autonomous search operations, such as intruder search. A ground rover cannot cross obstacles (e.g., steep valleys or lakes), and the rover can become unstable while consuming a large energy, as it moves on a hill that is too steep. Thus, low‐slope coverage route planning considering terrain information is necessary. It is desirable that the rover covers the given hilly workspace as wide as possible. For instance, considering a ground rover for search operation, it is desirable that the rover covers a wide area including the top of a mountain. To the best of our knowledge, our study is novel in addressing a low‐slope coverage route planner for covering a given cluttered workspace as wide as possible, while considering terrain information. Through MATLAB‐based simulations, this study verifies the efficacy of the proposed coverage route plan method.