Optimization of the initial position selection based on the Coverage Path Planning (CPP) algorithm

The task of Coverage Path Planning (CPP) is to generate a route that satisfies the condition of reaching every possible area of a specific room. The room is divided into grids whose sizes are the same as the target moving in the space. Basically, CPP algorithms are classified into classical algorithms and heuristic-based algorithms. This paper focuses on one of the heuristic-based algorithms, A*, and applies four heuristic mapping functions to generate the coverage path. Subsequently, every grid is considered as the initial point where the path is generated, and the resulting steps and the cost of the total steps are compared. Besides searching for the routes available to cover the whole map, the ultimate target of the algorithm under discussion is to select the best initial point among all of the grids. This step ensures that the valid path generated by the algorithm is the shortest or the most commercial result.