Decentralized coalition formation of multiple UAVs in an uncertain region

In cooperative missions, if an individual UAV does not have sufficient resources to neutralize a target then a coalition of UAVs may needs to be formed that fulfills the target resource requirement. This paper proposes an algorithm for the decentralized coalition formation of multiple heterogeneous UAVs that cooperatively perform a search and attack task to neutralize the static ground targets. The main objective of the proposed algorithm is to determine the smallest coalition that would successfully destroy the target in minimum time. First, the responding UAVs are sorted in the ascending order of their resource difference based cost, and then the eligible sets of UAVs with required total resources that can fulfill the target resource criteria are determined. Second, from the eligible sets of UAVs, the algorithm determines the set with minimum time to neutralize the target based on the time of arrival of UAVs on target. Simulation tests to study the performance of proposed approach are carried out and the results are compared with one of the reference sub optimal decentralized coalition formation approach. The results clearly depict that the proposed approach is more effective and gives near optimal solution for the decentralized coalition formation.