Team Oriented Programming for Dynamic Automated Target (TOPDAT) Area Threat and Route Optimization

This proposal is to develop Team Oriented Programming for Dynamic Automated Target (TOPDAT) Area Threat and Route Optimization. TOPDAT will dynamically plan and update air vehicle routes and response to threats in real-time for teams of manned and unmanned air vehicles on complex missions in hostile environments. The core challenge is to determine the optimal strike routing and utilization of limited defensive resources to de-conflict and protect air vehicles and thereby maximize mission success in a complex and changing threat environment. TOPDAT will apply a proven, state-of-the-art algorithm for planning for coordinated manned and unmanned assets. TOPDAT will use the concept of Team Oriented Plans to structure the overall activity and then use planning algorithms to work out the details. The planning algorithm works by iteratively planning for each asset individually, looking for interactions between the plans - and then replanning - taking into account the identified interactions. The result is an efficient algorithm that finds high quality coordinated plans for many assets. Due to the heterogeneity of the assets and the situations they face, we will use a suite of planning algorithms to do the planning for individual assets, with the right algorithm chosen for the situation with intelligent meta-reasoning.