OTS focuses on applying recent research results in search, scheduling, and constraint satisfaction to military and industrial optimization problems. Of particular interest are applications where recent improvements in the state of the art make it possible to achieve dramatic savings over existing approaches. Some of our major research areas, approaches, and application problem domains are briefly described below. More details are given on the linked pages.

Scheduling is the problem of assigning a set of tasks to a set of resources subject to a set of constraints. Examples of scheduling constraints include deadlines (e.g., job 775 must be completed by noon, Wednesday), resource capacities (e.g., there are only four drills), precedence constraints on the order of tasks (e.g., a piece must be sanded before it is painted), and priorities on tasks (e.g., finish job 397 as soon as possible while meeting the other deadlines). Examples of scheduling objective include makespan minimization (e.g., classical job-shop scheduling and resource-constrained project scheduling) cost minimization, and robustness. Details...

Route planning is the process of finding a path between two points through a list of connected nodes given a set of constraints. Examples of route planning include guiding motorists through congested city traffic, determining the best path between a list of delivery locations, and finding aircraft routes that consider weather and other routing factors. Routes can be optimized for different criteria, such as minimum fuel cost, minimum
transit time, and maximum payload. Details...