Automated Synchronized Routing and Scheduling for Agile Aerial Platforms

ALPHATECH proposes to develop a tool addressing the challenging problem of computing operationally realistic routes and activity schedules for aerial vehicles, accounting for the competing objectives and nonlinear constraints inherent in military path planning. Using an innovative combination of optimization techniques, this tool will generate platform trajectories and platform-task assignments as well as generate new plans in response to changes in the theater over time. We will accomplish this by hierarchically decomposing the flight path construction problem. In the first stage, an approximate dynamic programming formulation will be used, incrementally building synchronized coarse platform trajectories. In the second stage, multi-grid methods will be applied to refine the routes based on detailed models (platform capabilities, terrain, and environment). Finally, based on the agile routes, detailed activity schedules will be computed. Implementation of this methodology will provide mission planners with a robust planning and re-planning tool for unmanned vehicles. Phase I development will focus on the ISR planning problem, though the algorithms and techniques that will be developed will extend to other applications, such as strike.