A review on carrier aircraft dispatch path planning and control on deck

As an important part in sortie/recovery process, the dispatch of carrier aircraft not only affects the sortie/recovery efficiency and safety, but also has severe influence on the carrier’s combat efficiency and the comprehensive support capability. Path planning is the key to improve the efficiency and safety during the dispatch process. The main purpose of this paper is to propose a comprehensive investigation of techniques and research progress for the carrier aircraft’s dispatch path planning on the deck. Three different dispatch modes of carrier aircraft and the corresponding modeling technologies are investigated, and the aircraft’s dispatch path planning techniques and algorithms have been classified into different classes. Moreover, their assumptions and drawbacks have been discussed for single aircraft and multiple aircraft. To make the research work more comprehensive, the corresponding tracking control methodologies are also discussed. Finally, due to the similarity of path planning problem between the carrier aircraft’s dispatch and those in other fields, this paper provides an exploratory prospect of the knowledge or method learned from other fields.