Optimizing Trade-offs Between Distance and Coverage for Facility Location

Abstract

When utilizing multi-robot systems or sensors in a sensor network it is necessary to ensure communication between the individual robots or sensors. Problematically, communication methods are often limited in transmission distance and sensors can only measure the environment with some finite range. However, existing methods of dividing space (e.g., Voronoi diagrams) do not take into account the transmission or sensing distance limitations. In this paper we utilize genetic algorithms to divide space in a sensor network or robotic system environment, similar to the facility location problem. We discuss implications for planning travel to optimal locations for a set of communicating robotic systems.