Hierarchical method of task assignment for multiple cooperating UAV teams

The problem of task assignment for multiple cooperating unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) teams is considered. Multiple UAVs forming several small teams are needed to perform attack tasks on a set of predetermined ground targets. A hierarchical task assignment method is presented to address the problem. It breaks the original problem down to three levels of sub-problems: target clustering, cluster allocation and target assignment. The first two sub-problems are centrally solved by using clustering algorithms and integer linear programming, respectively, and the third sub-problem is solved in a distributed and parallel manner, using a mixed integer linear programming model and an improved ant colony algorithm. The proposed hierarchical method can reduce the computational complexity of the task assignment problem considerably, especially when the number of tasks or the number of UAVs is large. Experimental results show that this method is feasible and more efficient than non-hierarchical methods.