Searching algorithm for mine detector

Question

Basically I need to find an algorithm that will search a circular area for multiple mines minimising looking in the same place twice. The robot can start anywhere on the edge of the circle. I've looked into things like A* but all of them require knowledge of each goal before hand. The whole point of a mine detection robot is that the goals are unknown.Any cheap sensors can be used. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

just run a spiral? it is not optimized at 100%, as te external circle will overlap a bit at the end, but it is the best for easy to write/debug (even visually).

For sensor it all depends on with kind of mine you are loking for. There are a lot of trick, like "minimum metal mine" (no metal detector will work on them) and so on.

Answer 2

I suggest you to use the Ant Colony Optimization algorithm for this task, although I'm not agree with you about "all of them require knowledge of each goal before hand", cause you can use as much as domain knowledge that is provided for you.

Here is a good place to start getting some information about the ACO (if required).

The reason that I suggest you ACO is it's intrinsic analogy with the problem you got.

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If you provide more details about the problem I can tell you more about how to apply ACO to solve it (if required).