Dynamic rescheduling heuristics for military village search environments

Abstract

On the modern battlefield cordon and search missions (also known as village searches) are conducted daily. Creating resource allocations that link search teams (e.g. soldiers, robots, unmanned aerial vehicles, military working dogs) to target buildings is difficult and time consuming in the static planning environment and is even more challenging in a time-constrained dynamic environment. Conducting dynamic resource allocation during the execution of a military village search mission is beneficial especially when the time to develop a static plan is limited and hence the quality of the plan is relatively poor. Dynamic heuristics can help improve the static plan because they are able to incorporate current state information that is unavailable prior to mission execution and thus produce more accurate results than static heuristics alone can achieve. There are currently no automated means to create these dynamic resource allocations for military use. Using robustness concepts, this paper proposes and compares dynamic resource allocation heuristics that create mission plans that are resilient against uncertainty in the environment and that save valuable time for military planning staff.