Configuration of robot operational environment including layout of sensors

A method of operation of a processor-based system to facilitate robot operation, the method comprising:

• for each of a plurality of candidate sensor poses, performing an occlusion assessment that accounts for an occlusive effect of at least a first robot in an operational environment as the first robot moves through each of a plurality of robot poses of the first robot;
• and
• selecting one of the plurality of the candidate sensor poses to pose a first sensor based at least in part on the assessment of occlusion,
• wherein performing an occlusion assessment that accounts for an occlusive effect of at least a first robot in the operational environment as the first robot moves through each of a plurality of robot poses of the first robot includes, before a runtime and prior to performance of motion planning for the first robot to generate a motion plan, performing an occlusion assessment for each of a number of robot poses sampled from a roadmap of poses realizable by the first robot, the roadmap in a form of a graph comprising a set of nodes that represent respective robot poses in a C-space of the robot and a plurality of edges that couple pairs of the nodes and which represent transitions between the respective robot poses represented by the nodes which the respective edge couple, the method further comprising:
• after selecting one of the plurality of the candidate sensor poses to pose a first sensor based at least in part on the assessment of occlusion,
• for each of the plurality of candidate sensor poses, performing an occlusion assessment that accounts for an occlusive effect of at least a first robot in the operational environment as at least the first robot moves through each of a plurality of robot poses of the first robot;
• and
• selecting one of the plurality of the candidate sensor poses to pose a second sensor based at least in part on the assessment of occlusion.

A system of operation of a processor-based system to facilitate robot operation, the system comprising:

• at least one processor;
• at least one processor-readable medium communicatively coupled to the at least one processor and which stores processor-executable instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to:
• for each of a plurality of candidate sensor poses, perform an occlusion assessment that accounts for an occlusive effect of at least a first robot in an operational environment as the first robot moves through each of a plurality of robot poses of the first robot;
• and
• select one of the plurality of the candidate sensor poses to pose a first sensor based at least in part on the assessment of occlusion wherein, when executed, the processor-executable instructions cause the at least one processor further to:
• in an outer iterative loop executed for each voxel in a workspace, determine a respective occlusion value for at least a number of other voxels in the workspace, where the occlusion values are representative of whether the voxel of a current iteration of the outer iterative loop is occluded from one or more sensors by an object positioned so as to at least partially occupy the respective voxel for which the occlusion value is being determined;
• and
• aggregate a cost for the plurality of the candidate sensor poses.