AI Lab Colloquium: 11/24: Sofia's Choice: Automated Scheduling of an

[Subbarao Kambhampati <rao@parichaalak.eas.asu.edu>]

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			  AI Lab Colloquium


     SOFIA'S CHOICE: AUTOMATED SCHEDULING OF AN AIRBORNE OBSERVATORY

			     JEREMY FRANK
		      NASA AMES RESEARCH CENTER
		 http://ic.arc.nasa.gov/people/frank

		   2pm Monday Nov 24, 2003; GWC 487



The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) is NASA's
next  generation  airborne   astronomical observatory.   The  facility
consists of a 747-SP modified   to accommodate a 2.7 meter  telescope.
SOFIA is expected  to fly an average of  140 science flights/year over
it's 20 year life time.

A significant problem in future SOFIA operations is that of scheduling
Facility  Instrument   (FI) flights in support   of  the SOFIA General
Investigator (GI) program.  GIs are  expected to propose small numbers
of observations,  and many  observations  must be grouped  together to
make up  single  flights.  Approximately 70  GI  flight per   year are
expected,  with 5-15 observations per flight.   The  complexity of the
constraints (e.g. target elevation  limitations, fuel consumption, and
ground  track constraints) lead  to   a  complex hybrid planning   and
scheduling problem merely for  a single flight.  However,  the general
problem involves scheduling multiple flights simultaneously.

In this presentation  we  describe   the observatory,  the   resulting
scheduling problems,  and present our  approach to  solving the single
flight problem.  We also describe  some initial ideas and results  for
solving the problem of scheduling multiple flights.