A method for the operation of a cleaning vehicle, in particular a street sweeper capable of being operated in automated fashion, by a control device. A trajectory is calculated and control commands are produced for a longitudinal guiding and transverse guiding of the cleaning vehicle during travel of the calculated trajectory. Measurement data are received from at least one sensor in order to ascertain a cleaning region. At least one actuator is controlled, based on the received measurement data, in order to position a cleaning device of the cleaning vehicle in the longitudinal direction and/or transverse direction relative to a direction of travel of the cleaning vehicle, in order to clean the cleaning region. A control device, a computer program, and a machine-readable storage medium are also described.