Multi-Covering a Point Set by $m$ Disks with Minimum Total Area

Abstract

A common robotics sensing problem is to place sensors to robustly monitor a set of assets, where robustness is assured by requiring asset $p$ to be monitored by at least $\kappa(p)$ sensors. Given $n$ assets that must be observed by $m$ sensors, each with a disk-shaped sensing region, where should the sensors be placed to minimize the total area observed? We provide and analyze a fast heuristic for this problem. We then use the heuristic to initialize an exact Integer Programming solution. Subsequently, we enforce separation constraints between the sensors by modifying the integer program formulation and by changing the disk candidate set.