Covert robotics: covert path planning in unknown environments

Abstract

This paper is an extension to our research on hidden path planning: Covert Robotics. A new method is introduced here that allows a mobile robot in initially unknown environments to plan a covert path to a specified goal location in the absence of information about possible hostile sentries within the same environment. The aim is to balance between discovering a path to the goal and minimizing the robot’s exposure to the open and unknown spaces, as possible sentries might be anywhere. The presented approach is based on the concept of updating, during navigation, each location in the environment map with an estimated visibility cost value that represents the degree of exposure to the entire environment as can be judged with current map knowledge. The visibility cost at each location is integrated with its distance cost to the goal to plan and maintain the covert path. Promising results have been shown when testing the planning technique on a simulated environment. A number of test cases are presented. 1