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Lei et al. Intell Robot 2022;2(4):313­32 I http://dx.doi.org/10.20517/ir.2022.18 Page 321

The procedure of the proposed DCPP in a broiler barn is described in Algorithm 1. It is worth noting that the
DCPP does not provide the robot with an actual coverage path, which could vary based on the IPP.

Algorithm 1: Directed coverage path planning procedure in a broiler barn
Initialize the left turn times = 0;
Initialize the next step state as null, S = [];
Initialize the robot heading to the longer side of the barn;
while (the robot does not reach target position) do
if ( < 2) then
if (no obstacle on the right) then
Turn right and move forward;
else if (no obstacle in the front) then
Move forward;
else if (no obstacle on the left) then
Turn left and move forward;
= + 1;
end
end
if ( ≥ 3 and the robot can move forward) then
if (no obstacle in the front) then
Set S = [Move forward];
else if (no obstacle on the left) then
Set S = [Turn left and move forward];
Turn left;
else if (no obstacle on the right) then
Set S = [Turn right and move forward];
Turn right;
end
Perform S;
end
end

3.3. Informative planning protocol
The informative planning protocol (IPP) further refines and optimizes the coverage path based on historical
data on broiler mortality distribution in a broiler barn. In the general case, the IPP incorporates the multi-
objective informative planning and uses DCPP and historical data to guide the robots to more frequently
visit those places with a higher probability of broiler mortality appearance. This multi-objective optimization
problem is stated in Equation (11).

{ }
= argmax ( ),I 1 ( ),I 2 ( ), · · · ,I ( ) ,
∗
(11)
∈M
s.t. C ≤ B
where is a sequence of robot motion planning, is the selected robot motion with maximum information
∗
gain, M is the list of possible robot motion sequences, C is the cost budget, and B is a budget with regard
to time, memory, energy, maximum iteration times, etc. I ( ), = 1, 2, ..., , represents the information
gathered by the robot motions and is the number of the information source in the grid [34] . ( ) represents
the information from planned DCPP directions.