A Systematic‐Heuristic Approach for Space Trajectory Design
Massimiliano L. Vasile · Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2004
In this paper a novel algorithm is proposed for space trajectory design that combines a systematic and a heuristic method for global optimization. For the systematic part of the algorithm a branching technique is used, whereas a particular implementation of evolution programming forms the core of the heuristic part. The idea is to use a limited population evolving for a small number of generations, according to specific evolution rules, in subregions of the solution space defined by a branching procedure. On the other hand the branching rules are functions of the outcome from the evolution optimization. The proposed combined systematic-heuristic global optimization performs quite well on the cases analyzed in this paper, suggesting the possibility of more complex applications.