O-OSCAR: A flexible object-oriented architecture for schedule management in space applications

This paper overviews the results of a project aimed at developing: a state-of-the-art framework for intelligent constraint-based scheduling for activity management in space applications. The paper starts discussing the main features that an architecture for planning and scheduling should have to be actually used in a working environment. Crucial aspects are seen to be: the ability to built and dynamically maintain a representation of a certain domain; the ability to efficiently search for a. solution in a space of possibilities, and the ability to effectively interact with users according to needs of different operative environments. The O-OSCAR software architecture is described that contributes to solve two classes of problems of increasing difficulty, a satellite scheduling problem and a resource constrained project scheduling problem for space missions.