Toward Real-World Science Mission Planning
Nicola Muscettola, Barney Pell, Recom Technologies · 1994
In this paper we describe the use of our planning and scheduling framework, HSTS, to support sci-ence mission planning. This work is part of an overall project to enable a small team of scien-tists to control the operations of a spacecraft. The present process is essentially carried out by hu-man operators. Users (scientists and operators) rely on a non-codified understanding of the differ-ent spacecraft subsystems and of their operating constraints. They use a variety of software tools to support their decision making process. A success-ful use of AI planning and scheduling technology must consider the types of decision making that need to be supported/automated, the nature of the domain constraints and the capabilities needed to address them successfully, and the nature of ex-ternal software systems with which the core plan-ning/scheduling engine needs to interact. 1