Path planning for data collection robot in sensing field with obstacles

Using mobile robots to collect data from wireless sensor network can reduce energy dissipation and this way improves network lifetime. Our problem is to plan paths for unicycle robots to visit a set of sensor nodes and download data on a sensing field with obstacles while minimizing the path length and the collecting time. Reconstructing the path of an intruder in a guarded area is also a possible application of this technology. During path planning we greatly emphasize the handling of obstacles. If the area contains many or large obstacles, the robots may spend long time for avoid them so this is a critical point of finding the minimal path. This paper proposes a new approach for handling obstacles during path planning. A new algorithm is developed to plan the visiting sequence of nodes taking into consideration the obstacles as well.