Convex Decomposition for a Coverage Path Planning for Autonomous Vehicles: Interior Extension of Edges

To cover an area of interest by an autonomous vehicle, such as an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), planning a coverage path which guides the unit to cover the area is an essential process. However, coverage path planning is often problematic, especially when the boundary of the area is complicated and the area contains several obstacles. A common solution for this situation is to decompose the area into disjoint convex sub-polygons and to obtain coverage paths for each sub-polygon using a simple back-and-forth pattern. Aligned with the solution approach, we propose a new convex decomposition method which is simple and applicable to any shape of target area. The proposed method is designed based on the idea that, given an area of interest represented as a polygon, a convex decomposition of the polygon mainly occurs at the points where an interior angle between two edges of the polygon is greater than 180 degrees. The performance of the proposed method is demonstrated by comparison with existing convex decomposition methods using illustrative examples.