Threat Evasion Route Optimizer

The solicitation for this topic stresses the need for alternatives to current methods that compute safe altitudes and routes for air vehicles in the presence of dynamic ground threats. The proposed approach uses transformation and optimization in conjunction with aircraft performance, terrain height, threat information, and user-specified objectives to provide real time automated path and mission planning for aerial platforms under dynamic conditions and constraints. The system takes into account user-prioritized objectives regarding threat exposure (IR or radar), distance from threats, fuel, ground collision risk, time of flight, etc. Dynamic Programming is used to perform the optimization over large terrain areas, and changes in the environment (threats, weather) can be accounted for in seconds. The tool can serve not only as an expert decision aid, but also as a means of evaluating planning solutions that are generated by humans as well as a cost/benefit exploratory tool for planning. Approaches for information depiction and graphics rendering are proposed, and the issues surrounding hardware implementation addressed.