Title: VIATO - Visual Interactive Aircraft Trajectory Optimization

Authors: Kai Virtanen, Harri Ehtamo, Tuomas Raivio and Raimo P. Hämäläinen

Status: IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C: Applications and Reviews, Vol. 29, No. 3, 1999, pp. 409-421.

Keywords: Air combat; Interactive Computing; Optimal control; Trajectory optimization; Nonlinear programming.

An approach towards the automated solution of aircraft trajectory optimization problems is introduced and implemented in an interactive software called 'Visual Interactive Aircraft Trajectory Optimization' (VIATO). This MS Windows-compatible software produces minimum time trajectories to a fixed or a moving target. It is easy to use by nonexperts as no previous knowledge of the methods of optimal control theory or mathematical modeling are needed. VIATO consists of a graphical user interface, an optimization server and a model server. In VIATO, different aircraft types are represented by a set of parameters. The equations of motion and state as well as control constraints are fixed in advance. Since the objective function is also specified, the user avoids the modeling and explicit formulation of optimal control problems. Reliable convergence to an approximate optimal solution is achieved by converting the original optimal control problem into a finite dimensional optimization problem. The parameterized problem is solved using nonlinear programming.