Task allocation and route planning of multiple UAVs in a marine environment based on an improved particle swarm optimization algorithm

Abstract Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are considered a promising example of an automatic emergency task in a dynamic marine environment. However, the maritime communication performance between UAVs and offshore platforms has become a severe challenge. Due to the complex marine environment, the task allocation and route planning efficiency of multiple UAVs in an intelligent ocean are not satisfactory. To address these challenges, this paper proposes an intelligent marine task allocation and route planning scheme for multiple UAVs based on improved particle swarm optimization combined with a genetic algorithm (GA-PSO). Based on the simulation of an intelligent marine control system, the traditional particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is improved by introducing partial matching crossover and secondary transposition mutation. The improved GA-PSO is used to solve the random task allocation problem of multiple UAVs and the two-dimensional route planning of a single UAV. The simulation results show that compared with the traditional scheme, the proposed scheme can significantly improve the task allocation efficiency, and the navigation path planned by the proposed scheme is also optimal