Optimal placement of 3D sensors considering range and field of view

This paper describes a novel approach to the problem of optimal placement of 3D sensors in a specified volume of interest. The coverage area of the sensors is modelled as a cone having limited field of view and range. The volume of interest is divided into many, smaller cubes each having a set of associated Boolean and continuous variables. The proposed method could be easily extended to handle the case where certain sub-volumes must be covered by several sensors (redundancy), for example ex-zones, regions where humans are not allowed to enter or regions where machine movement may obstruct the view of a single sensor. The optimisation problem is formulated as a Mixed-Integer Linear Program (MILP) utilising logical constraints and piecewise linearisation of nonlinear functions. The final MILP problem is solved using the Cplex solver interfaced with Matlab.