Counting Objects with a Combination of Horizontal and Overhead Sensors

In this paper we consider the problem of planning sensor observations for a network of overhead sensors which will resolve ambiguities in the output of a horizontal sensor network. More specifically, we address the problem of counting the number of objects detected by the horizontal sensor network, using the overhead network to aim at specific areas to improve the count. We consider several different overhead sensor models. The main theme of our results is that, even though observation planning is intractable for such a network, a simple, greedy algorithm for controlling the overhead sensors guarantees performance with bounded and reasonable suboptimality. Our results are very general and make few assumptions about the specific sensors used.

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