Interactive Smart Search Route Planning System

This proposal describes a feasibility study of the goals and tasks required to implement a Smart Search Planning Capability for hunter/seeker missiles, attack aircraft, and/or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Our approach builds on our existing demonstrated capability of performing long range aircraft route planning while accounting for terrain, weather, and dense threat populations on the battlefield. This work will be extended to perform the Smart Search Planning task. Our approach is to use historical knowledge of previous missions and general knowledge concerning optimal search patterns to constrain the search that must be performed by the three-dimensional route generation algorithm. We propose innovative extensions to two such algorithms that are based on artificial potential fields. The results of this Phase I will be demonstrated in a fully-operational prototype version of the Interactive Smart Search Route Planning System. This prototype will generate optimal or near-optimal search paths for areas specified by the user or the Navy's Threat Movement Analyzer. The resulting paths will account for both aircraft and sensor characteristics, including weather and terrain effects.