Integrated Task Assignment and Path Planning with Moving Targets Based on an Innovative Linear Programming Approach and Dubins Curves

Recent developments in mission implementation and agent control have drawn attention to the performing of cooperative missions. Decision-making systems are among the most important parts of such missions. The aim of these systems is efficient task assignment and path planning. This paper combines a task assignment approach and a path planning method to tackle collaborative problems. The task assignment approach, used in this paper, is based on an improved linear programming approach for its high accuracy. The path planning method is based on Dubins curve to handle the limitation movements of fixed-wing fighters, investigated in this paper. The proposed methods perform based on the utilized fighter’s performance characteristics and flight constraints in a dynamic environment with moving targets. The path planning approach is based on specific constraints, including certain output vectors of each point as well as input ones to the target points, minimum rotational angle, and performance factors of fighters. In the next step, Dubins path planning output is used as the necessary coefficient to solve the task assignment problem of cooperative fighters. By using a heuristic hierarchical approach based on linear programming, a comprehensive path planning and task assignment of a fleet of fighters is completed. The presented results show optimal performance and higher speed to solve rather than the classical approaches, which is capable to cover the dynamic environment as well.