A Tiling-Theoretic Approach to Efficient Area Coverage in a Tetris-Inspired Floor Cleaning Robot

Although numerous studies have focused on the development and application of polyomino tiling theories, research of this nature is typically limited to the graphics and gaming fields. In this paper, we are presenting an innovative application of the polyomino tiling theory which is applied to Tetris-inspired reconfigurable robotic cleaning device as a means of solving the area coverage problem. The robotic floor cleaner (hTetro) that was developed as part of this research leverages the polyomino tiling theory to automatically generate the global tiling set required to ensure the full area of a given space is covered. In this paper, three Tetris tiling theorems were validated using our developed hTetro robot. The results of the research clearly indicated that the proposed approach offers a strong area coverage performance across all experimental cases. This paper includes an outline of the system architecture that underpins the hTetro robot and a comprehensive overview of the three tiling theorems that were applied in this research.