This letter addresses the 3D coverage path planning (CPP) problem for terrain reconstruction of unknown obstacle rich environments. Due to sensing limitations, the proposed method, called CT-CPP, performs layered scanning of the 3D region to collect terrain data, where the traveling sequence is optimized using the concept of a coverage tree (CT) with a TSP-inspired tree traversal strategy. The CT-CPP method is validated on a high-fidelity underwater simulator and the results are compared to an existing terrain following CPP method. The results show that CT-CPP yields significant reduction in trajectory length, energy consumption, and reconstruction error.
@article{arxiv.2010.09231,
title = {CT-CPP: Coverage Path Planning for 3D Terrain Reconstruction Using Dynamic Coverage Trees},
author = {Zongyuan Shen and Junnan Song and Khushboo Mittal and Shalabh Gupta},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.09231},
year = {2021}
}