FMEA-Based Coverage-Path-Planning Strategy for Floor-Cleaning Robots

Floor-cleaning robots play a crucial role in both industrial and domestic spaces. However, these robots often face challenges due to hazardous components in their environment, which can cause them to fail and prevent them from performing at their best. This situation necessitates continuous research in the field of floor-cleaning robots. However, most of these efforts focus on improving the robots' perception capabilities by incorporating additional sensors. Nevertheless, incorporating more sensors is an expensive solution for most cleaning robots. Alternatively, in this research, the feasibility of introducing a safe path on a predefined hazard map is explored. The proposed method aims to trade-off between area coverage and the safety of the cleaning robot. Herein, the failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) method is introduced as a tool to classify the hazards and implement a safety-ensured coverage path-planning process. In this approach, the risk factor defined for a point in the environment serves as the key parameter to assess the safety of the algorithm's suggested path. To validate and evaluate the proposed method, this article utilizes the hTetro mobile robot. In the experimental results, it is demonstrated that the proposed method can reduce high-risk movements of the robot compared to existing methods.