Scale-able lens pattern

Hi everyone,

I am stuck on a little experiment with paneling a curved surface with a lens type object and was wondering if anyone in the community has had experience modelling such an object.

I have a curved plane that I want to divide in a gradient so that the highest degree of concavity the curve is divided the least, and disperses as you move away from the focal point. 

Once the plane is divided, I want to move the lens geometry onto the surface. 

All that above is relatively simply and I have a handle on it. The other condition I want to experiment with is that even though I have divided the grid in a gradient, I want the lens to scale so that way there is an equal distance between each edge of the geometry. Essentially creating an offset border so that the distance between center points may be different, but they scale so they prevent from getting any closer than X distance to each other.

I have attached a quick sketch of what I am thinking about, I am currently away from the machine with my first stab at the GH code but I hope this conveys what I am talking about.

also Thank you Mr Michael Pryor for his great blogspot helping teach myself about attractor points.

Cheers,

Andrew