Fast CORDIC based Generalized-Voronoi-Diagram Hardware Accelerator for Efficient Robotic Exploration

This paper proposes a fast-convergence CO-ordinate Rotation DIgital Computer (CORDIC) based Generalized Voronoi Diagram (GVD) hardware accelerator for efficient robotic path exploration. Owing to the high precision contributed by fast-convergence CORDIC, the proposed GVD hardware accelerator significantly improves the accuracy of the explored paths as compared to the baseline design. Higher precision of the exploration causes shorter trajectory of the robot, which further reduces the power consumption of the entire robot system. Therefore, our design is suitable to the battery-powered small-scale robots. FPGA implementation shows that, the proposed design operating at 12-bit fixed point achieves 54% higher precision of the explored paths and 20% lower power consumption of the robot system than the baseline design, respectively.