Algorithms for Visibility-Based Monitoring with Robot Teams

TL;DR

This paper addresses the complex problem of planning robot paths for visual monitoring in environments, offering approximation algorithms for specific cases and practical solutions for general scenarios, supported by theoretical and simulation results.

Contribution

It introduces a polynomial-time 4-approximation algorithm for street polygon environments and a practical method for the general problem, advancing the field of visibility-based robot monitoring.

Findings

Polynomial-time 4-approximation algorithm for street polygons

Practical solution for the general problem with potentially exponential runtime

Simulation results demonstrating effectiveness of proposed methods

Abstract

We study the problem of planning paths for a team of robots for visually monitoring an environment. Our work is motivated by surveillance and persistent monitoring applications. We are given a set of target points in a polygonal environment that must be monitored using robots with cameras. The goal is to compute paths for all robots such that every target is visible from at least one path. In its general form, this problem is NP-hard as it generalizes the Art Gallery Problem and the Watchman Route Problem. We study two versions: (i) a geometric version in \emph{street polygons} for which we give a polynomial time $4$--approximation algorithm; and (ii) a general version for which we present a practical solution that finds the optimal solution in possibly exponential time. In addition to theoretical proofs, we also present results from simulation studies.