Abstract: A method of determining a path having an ordered set of waypoints to be visited by a mobile agent to accomplish a mission includes: producing candidate paths using a multi-objective optimization algorithm, subject to a path production heuristic; selecting a path from the candidate paths, subject to a path selection heuristic; instructing the mobile agent to move according to the selected path; modifying a maintained subset of the candidate paths to produce a new candidate path using the algorithm and subject to the path production heuristic; designating either the currently-selected path or the new candidate path as the newly-selected path, subject to the path selection heuristic; and instructing the mobile agent to move according to the newly-selected path. The method may further include iterating production of new candidate paths, either randomly or based on modifications of previous candidate paths, to continually update an operation plan for the mobile agent.