Cooperative Task Assignment of a Heterogeneous Multi-UAV System Using an Adaptive Genetic Algorithm

The cooperative multiple task assignment problem (CMTAP) is an NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem. In this paper, CMTAP is to allocate multiple heterogeneous fixed-wing UAVs to perform a suppression of enemy air defense (SEAD) mission on multiple stationary ground targets. To solve this problem, we study the adaptive genetic algorithm (AGA) under the assumptions of the heterogeneity of UAVs and task coupling constraints. Firstly, the multi-type gene chromosome encoding scheme is designed to generate feasible chromosomes that satisfy the heterogeneity of UAVs and task coupling constraints. Then, AGA introduces the Dubins car model to simulate the UAV path formation and derives the fitness value of each chromosome. In order to comply with the chromosome coding strategy of multi-type genes, we designed the corresponding crossover and mutation operators to generate feasible offspring populations. Especially, the proposed mutation operators with the state-transition scheme enhance the stochastic searching ability of the proposed algorithm. Last but not least, the proposed AGA dynamically adjusts the number of crossover and mutation populations to avoid the subjective selection of simulation parameters. The numerical simulations verify that the proposed AGA has a better optimization ability and convergence effect compared with the random search method, genetic algorithm, ant colony optimization method, and particle search optimization method. Therefore, the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is proven.