zjutongyang / nuc_ros

Non-revisiting Uniform Coverage (NUC)

This repository is the ROS package for the journal paper entitled "Template-free Non-revisiting Uniform Coverage Path Planning on Curved Surfaces", IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics (T-Mech).

Paper Link

This paper claimed that a physically uniform coverage path should be designed based on a physically uniform representation of the target surface, such as a triangular mesh, rather than enforcing a curvilinear coordinate. Typically resultant coverage paths generated by the proposed algorithm are as follows:

The supplementary code in this repo is capable of generating the non-repetitive coverage path on ARBITRARY connected triangular mesh. Input a uniform mesh, and you will get a uniform coverage.

Video Link

Supplementary Video

Dependencies

1. trimesh (only if you want to test my python script first)

pip3 install trimesh

Usage

1. Clone the code in the src folder of a ROS workspace

git clone https://github.com/ZJUTongYang/nuc_ros.git

2. Compile the workspace

catkin_make

This will create a python module named nuc, as well as ros messages and services.

3. Start the algorithm

roslaunch nuc demo.launch

If everything is correct, there should be two rostopics, "/nuc_mesh" (of type nuc/MeshWithFrame) and "/nuc_path" (of type nav_msgs/Path). If a mesh is sent to the algorithm through "/nuc_mesh", a coverage path will be generated and published to "/nuc_path" whose frame was "nuc_demo_test_frame", designated in "/nuc_mesh".

4. If you want to try my demo python script, start a new terminal and run (I assume you are still in the workspace directory)

rosrun nuc demo.py src/nuc_ros/mesh_data/remeshed_saddle.stl

5. Start a new terminal and open a rviz window by typing

rosrun rviz rviz

add the topic "/nuc_path", and type the frame of rviz as "nuc_demo_test_frame" (you have to type in it instead of choose it). Finally, you will be able to see a coverage path designed for a saddle-shaped surface.

Bug Report

The code does not have any randomness so bugs can be easily reproduced. If your surface triggers a bug in my code, please send the mesh data to me.

Cite This Paper

@article{Yang2023Template,
  title={Template-Free Nonrevisiting Uniform Coverage Path Planning on Curved Surfaces},
  author={Yang, Tong and Miro, Jaime Valls and Nguyen, Minh and Wang, Yue and Xiong, Rong},
  journal={IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics},
  year={2023},
  volume={28},
  number={4},
  pages={1853--1861},
  publisher={IEEE}
}