Microcomputer Based Aircraft Routing And Scheduling Phase 2

The work concerns research, development and software implementation of distributed mathematical optimization algorithms for aircraft routing and scheduling. Two Air Force application concerns customized short-term scheduling of military aircraft to support mission-critical passenger travel. The mission routing and scheduling procedures developed under the project were coded, and a graphical user interface was developed for prototype use by United States Air Forces in Europe at Ramstein AFB in Germany. In addition to the optimization procedures and the graphical user interface, a specialized underlying database management system was developed from scratch, to support an airport atlas and information pertaining to aircraft characteristics, traveling personnel, and other relevant information. The system runs UNIX workstation computers under the X-Window environment with Motif. The optimization model and distributed computing model were designed and developed to facilitate expansion into use for military passenger fleet units that are highly distributed geographically, setting the stage for strong coordination of airlift activities among multiple sites and different branches of the armed forces. The optimization approach is based on set partitioning, and uses global methods inspired by price-directive decomposition. Recent advances in artificial intelligence for distributed problem solving, and recent capabilities in wide-area communication technology also play a role.