Unable to understand the code following the paper

[ascoril]

Hi,

In the paper Section 2 Coverage Path doesn't say anything about using Hamiltonian Cycle for solving TSP problem. But Line 287 of Coverage_Task class has the check for Hamiltonian Cycle?

Could you explain why in the code the Hamiltonian Cycle check is there ?

[emmarapt]

Hello ascoril,

Thank you for your comment! You’re correct that Section 2 of the paper doesn’t explicitly mention using the Hamiltonian Cycle for solving the CPP problem. However, the Hamiltonian Cycle check in Line 287 of the Coverage_Task class is there for a specific reason related to the overall problem formulation.

The Coverage Path Planning problem is NP-hard. For the circumnavigation step (i.e., the final step in constructing the optimal path), we need to traverse the nodes in a Hamiltonian cycle around the minimum spanning tree (MST). This ensures the path covers all nodes without revisiting them unnecessarily while maintaining computational efficiency.

In this case, the implementation at Line 287 efficiently checks for and constructs a Hamiltonian cycle in polynomial time. While Section 2 focuses on the theoretical aspects of coverage path planning, this specific implementation detail aligns with the practical requirements of circumnavigation.