A Task Allocation Model for a Team of Aircraft Launching on the Carrier

High level efficiency and safety are of paramount importance for the improvement of fighting capability of an aircraft carrier. The task allocation problem for a team of aircraft launching on the carrier is studied in this paper. Although the study of this problem is of great significance, no relevant literature has been found on this issue. Firstly, the conceptual model of problem is formulated with the planning objectives and the constraints defined. Then the multi-aircraft and multi-catapult launching task allocation problem is decomposed into two consecutive sub-tasks, that is, catapult allocation and the launching sequence determination. The taxi time of aircraft is considered during the catapult allocation process, and the launching position of each aircraft is determined using a decision-making method. In the launching sequence determination step, the starting collision risk of aircraft is introduced to optimize the launching sequence which results in the minimum collision risk on each catapult. Thirdly, the proposed method is validated using the setups of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. The proposed method is used to solve the task allocation problem and is compared to the artificial heuristics approach and the brute force approach. Experiment results demonstrate that the proposed method has better performance than the artificial heuristics approach and has better performance than the brute force approach in balancing efficiency and safety.