On the optimal placement of multiple visual sensors

Many novel multimedia systems and applications use visual sensor arrays. An important issue in designing sensor arrays is the appropriate placement of the visual sensors such that they achieve a predefined goal. In this paper we focus on the placement with respect to maximizing coverage or achieving coverage at a certain resolution. We identify and consider four different problems: maximizing coverage subject to a given number of cameras (a) or a maximum total price of the sensor array (b), optimizing camera poses given fixed locations (c), and minimizing the cost of a sensor array given a minimally required percentage of coverage (d). To solve these problems, we propose different algorithms. Our approaches can be subdivided into algorithms which give a global optimum solution and heuristics which solve the problem within reasonable time and memory consumption at the cost of not necessarily determining the global optimum. We also present a user-interface to enter and edit the spaces under analysis, the optimization problems as well as the other setup parameters. The different algorithms are experimentally evaluated and results are presented. The results show that the algorithms work well and are suited for different practical applications. For the final paper it is planned to have the user interface running as a web service.