Application of Artificial Potential Field for Coverage Control with Collision Avoidance Under Sensing Constraints

In multi-agent coverage control, the Voronoi diagram optimization strategy is widely used. However, the limitation of sensing radius makes Voronoi diagram optimization strategy not suitable to implement. Moreover, when the agent’s dimension and obstacles are considered, the Voronoi diagram cannot deal further due to the collision that may occur. Considering these limitations, power diagram optimization strategy is used. To deal with obstacles, artificial potential field strategy is combined with the power diagram. Despite its simplicity, the numerical study shows that the proposed scheme of coverage control works well under sensing constraints even with the presence of obstacles. The proposed strategy is convergent to the objective without collision with obstacles as well as among the agents. © 2020, Brazilian Society for Automatics--SBA.