Hierarchical task network-based carrier aircraft task planning

Carrier aircraft task planning problems involve complicated resource constraints, temporal constraints, operation rules and equipment limitations. Tasks seriously interact with each other. As such, it is a typical NP-hard problem which is difficult to deal with by following conventional mathematical modeling and problem-solving methods. Aiming at the aircraft task planning problem, this paper considers task hierarchy and resource conflicts caused by time and spatial constraints, develops a resource status updating mechanism and proposes a Hierarchical Task Network(HTN) planning algorithm. The results of the experimental study indicate that the proposed HTN algorithm is capable of rapidly generating an action plan for tasks with time windows constrained by resources and temporal relationships.