Time-optimal coverage control for multiple unicycles in a drift field

This paper is concerned with the time-optimal coverage control problem for multiple unicycles in a drift field. Regarding the optimal time for each vehicle to reach an arbitrary point in the given region as a metric, a novel cost function is defined to evaluate the performance of the coverage network. Then, the time-optimal Voronoi partition is developed by using the optimal control theory and Lloyd's algorithms. On this basis, a distributed coverage control law is proposed to deploy the unicycles to the optimal positions. The stability of this coverage system is further analyzed. Finally, numerical simulations are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches.