Path Planning for Floor Cleaning Robots Based on MATLAB Simulink

Abstract

The increasing popularity of robotic vacuum cleaners in households in recent years has established them as indispensable devices in many homes and has also demonstrated their potential in various other domains. Nevertheless, numerous robotic sweepers available in the market exhibit certain constraints, including repetitive sweeping of the same area, collisions, or entrapment by obstacles. These limitations restrict their effectiveness in specific settings, such as hospitals, where comprehensive cleaning is essential. In an effort to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of robotic sweepers, a research project was undertaken to investigate the feasibility of navigating a two-dimensional environment utilizing plannerAStar, a path planning algorithm in MATLAB. The study findings indicated a direct correlation between the quantity of goals established through the A-planner and the percentage of independent obstacles effectively circumvented, as well as the area traversed in a distinct "side-to-side" configuration. The enhanced pattern variant exhibited greater consistency and coverage in an environment characterized by walls and corridors. Improved path planning algorithms have been developed utilizing the plannerAStar function in MATLAB Simulink to address issues related to collisions and obstructions encountered by swinging robots in real-world scenarios. Simulation results demonstrate that the path planning algorithm utilizing plannerAStar significantly decreases the path length by 34%, reduces the number of collisions by 75%, and lowers the collision rate by 10% in comparison to the fundamental randomized algorithm. The findings indicate that utilizing the plannerAStar algorithm for path planning is anticipated to notably decrease both redundant collisions and obstacle collisions for the robot, consequently enhancing the robot's operational efficiency.