2021/05/18 by Esther Viridiana Vazquez-Carmona, Vazquez-Carmona, E. Viridiana, Juan Irving Vasquez +5 · 2 citations
Computer Science · Engineering · #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Mathematics #Optimization and Control (math.OC) #Robotic Path Planning Algorithms #Robotics (cs.RO) #UAV Applications and Optimization
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2105.08743
openalex publication_date 2021/05/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The pandemic by COVID-19 is causing a devastating effect on the health of global population. There are several efforts to prevent the spread of the virus. Among those efforts, cleaning and disinfecting public areas have become important tasks. In order to contribute in this direction, this paper proposes a coverage path planning algorithm for a spraying drone, a micro aerial vehicle that has mounted a sprayer/sprinkler system, to disinfect areas. In contrast with planners in the state-of-the-art, this proposal presents i) a new sprayer/sprinkler model that fits a more realistic coverage volume to the drop dispersion and ii) a planning algorithm that efficiently restricts the flight to the region of interest avoiding potential collisions in bounded scenes. The drone with the algorithm has been tested in several simulation scenes, showing that the algorithm is effective and covers more areas with respect to other approaches in the literature. Note that the proposal is not limited to disinfection applications, but can be applied to other ones, such as painting or precision agriculture.