Scheduled Imaging of Multiple Threat Aircraft Using a Modified Traveling Salesman Problem

What is it about?

Aircraft can be hazards to navigation in civil aviation and malicious threats in military settings. This note considers how best to use a steerable sensor with a limited field of view when trying to assess the risk posed by several different aircraft. The question we ask is: Where to steer the sensor next? The answer depends on whether one is more interested in characterizing all of the threats quickly or in characterizing the ones that seem the most dangerous first. We provide an algorithm that can be tuned to resolve this trade-off according to a user's preference and some guidance on how to do that.

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