Vehicle mission guidance by symbolic optimal control

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how symbolic optimal control can be applied to generate optimal routing controllers for vehicle systems, addressing complex routing problems like the capacitated vehicle routing and traveling salesman problems in continuous state spaces.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of symbolic optimal control to vehicle routing problems, including scenarios with vehicle loss, using continuous state space models.

Findings

Successfully applied to vehicle routing and TSP variants

Handles vehicle loss scenarios in routing

Provides near-optimal controllers for complex vehicle dynamics

Abstract

Symbolic optimal control is a powerful method to synthesize algorithmically correct-by-design state-feedback controllers for nonlinear plants. Its solutions are (near-)optimal with respect to a given cost function. In this note, it is demonstrated how symbolic optimal control can be used to calculate controllers for an optimized routing guidance of vehicle systems in continuous state space. In fact, the capacitated vehicle routing problem and a variant of travelling salesman problem are investigated. The latter problem has a relevant application in case of loss of vehicles during mission. A goods delivery scenario and a reconnaissance mission, involving bicycle and aircraft dynamics respectively, are provided as examples.