Optimized Stochastic Coordinated Planning of Asynchronous Air and Space Assets

Abstract

among separate sensing assets, creating inefficiencies that could be avoided through coordinated planning. Such isolation between operations of separate planners means that requests may not be allocated to the most appropriate sensors based on their specific requirements. Studies requiring sensing assets have become increasingly more prevalent in the past few years, suggesting a more urgent need for a coordinated planning framework. One of the major recent uses of sensor systems involves employing satellites or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to study Earth's climate. The Earth Observing System, designed by NASA, is one such example of a set of sensors being used for climatology. Within this system, NASA launched many satellites. The Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite is one of these, launched in October 2011. This satellite orbits Earth about 14 times per day, observing nearly the entire surface in this time period. The sensors onboard NPP perform many different climate-related operations, such as creating global models of temperature and moisture profiles for use by meteorologists, monitoring the ozone levels near the poles, measuring atmospheric and oceanic properties, and examining both emitted and reflected radiation from Earth's surface [1]. The Aqua satellite, also in the NASA Earth Observing System, collects information about the following: Earth's water cycle, including evaporation from the oceans, water vapor in the atmosphere, clouds, precipitation, soil moisture, sea ice, land ice, and snow cover on the land and ice. Additional variables also being measured by Aqua include radiative energy fluxes, aerosols, vegetation cover on the land, phytoplankton and dissolved organic matter in the oceans, and air, land, and water temperatures [2]. These are just two examples of the many satellites currently in orbit collecting climate-related information, all of which have some sort of overlapping interests and may even contain some of the same sensor models. As such, implementing a coordinated planning scheme within satellite planners of the Earth Observing System, or any climate-related satellites, could prevent redundant gathering of the same data while spreading collection demands more evenly across the satellites for more effective sensor utilization. Recent interest in examining natural disasters has also increased, furthering the need to efficiently coordinate between sensor planners. The Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel, which is a NASA investigation designed to enhance understanding of the "processes that underlie hurricane formation and intensity change in the Atlantic Ocean basin," is one such example of a mission trying to learn more about natural disasters [3]. The U.S. Forest Service has also recently been employing UAVs and satellites to help image active wildfires, reducing the risks of "smoke, excessive thermal wind drafts, and unfamiliar terrain" on the pilots that usually do the imaging in airplanes or helicopters [4]. Science and forestry are not the only areas that c...

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