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?
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.