An expert planner for the dynamic flight environment

Abstract

This paper presents a robust robot planner that functions in the complex and dynamic flight domain. The robot pilot flies an aircraft between two airports and can adjust in flight to changes in the environment such as closed destination airport, thunderstorm in the flight path, and failed engine. The planner adjusts to the world changes by locally patching around the break point instead of complete replanning. The planning architecture is based on the vertical decomposition of domain knowledge, resulting in shallow planning and recovery planning. This robot flight planner can be utilized as the front end of an intelligent flight monitor. The flight planner dynamically generates the references that are used to determine whether the flight crew should be notified of potential problems. The implementation of this robot planner is also discussed.