Stage Illumination Problem

Consider the following illumination problem: given a stage represented by a horizontal line segment and a set of light sources represented by a set of points in the plane above, assign powers to the light sources such that every point on the stage receives a sufficient amount (say one unit) of light while minimizing the overall power consumption. Under the assumption that the amount of light arriving from a fixed light source decreases rapidly with the distance from the light source, this becomes an interesting optimization problem. Two approximation algorithms based on linear programming are used in this Demonstration.