A hybrid multi-start metaheuristic scheduler for astronomical observations

In this paper, we investigate Astronomical Observations Scheduling which is a type of Multi-Objective Combinatorial Optimization Problem, and detail its specific challenges and requirements and propose the Hybrid Accumulative Planner (HAP), a hybrid multi-start metaheuristic scheduler able to adapt...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Nakhjiri, Nariman, Salamó, Maria, Sànchez-Marrè, Miquel, Morales, Juan Carlos
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2023
Country:España
Institution:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repository:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/347364
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/347364
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Metaheuristic
Scheduling repair
Multi-start algorithm
Telescope scheduling
Artificial intelligence
Description
Summary:In this paper, we investigate Astronomical Observations Scheduling which is a type of Multi-Objective Combinatorial Optimization Problem, and detail its specific challenges and requirements and propose the Hybrid Accumulative Planner (HAP), a hybrid multi-start metaheuristic scheduler able to adapt to the different variations and demands of the problem. To illustrate the capabilities of the proposal in a real-world scenario, HAP is tested on the Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey (Ariel) mission of the European Space Agency (ESA), and compared with other studies on this subject including an Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) approach. The results show that the proposal outperforms the other methods in the evaluation and achieves better scientific goals than its peers. The consistency of HAP in obtaining better results on the available datasets for Ariel, with various sizes and constraints, demonstrates its competence in scalability and adaptability to different conditions of the problem.