Research On Multi-UAV Task Assignment Problem With Random Criteria

With the development of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technology and its many advantages, UAVs are increasingly being applied to many fields, task assignment problem for multiple UAVs is becoming more and more attention. Task assignment problem for multiple UAVs is to take a certain optimization goal, assigning the specific tasks to each UAV, and the objective function value is optimal. However, due to increasingly complex real task environment, the criteria information for task assignment is often uncertain, with the performance of certain randomness, and the weights of criteria are not precisely known. In such a task environment, the traditional mathematical programming methods are difficult to work. Therefore how to give the best assignment results depend on the random criteria information before the mission starts becomes a serious problem. This paper put the multi-UAV assignment problems with random criteria as the research objects, and a task assignment method was proposed based on the stochastic multi-criteria acceptability analysis (SMAA) method. The specific research contents include the following three aspects:(1) The description and analysis on SMAA method. The SMAA method is a kind of mainstream random multi-attribute decision methods. This paper introduced the origin and development of the method, then gave the main idea of the method a more detailed description, and the application examples of methods were summarized, laid the foundation for the next specific research work.(2) The research on multi-UAV search task assignment problem with random criteria. Firstly, described the problem environment of the search task, proposed three criteria to be considered and analyzed the randomness of criteria in the task environment. Then designed the decision step of task assignment based on the SMAA-2 method:put all exemplified solutions as alternatives, select the rank acceptability index as basis for decision making, and gave the algorithm of rank acceptability index. Finally, two simulation experiments with different weights showed the feasibility and effectiveness of the method.(3) The research on multi-UAV attack task assignment problem with random criteria. Firstly, described the problem environment of the attack task, proposed three criteria to be considered and analyzed the randomness of criteria in the task environment. Then designed the decision step of task assignment based on the SMAA-2 method:decomposed the decision problem based on the target amount, respectively used the SMAA-2 method on them, selected the holistic acceptability index as basis for decision making, and gave the algorithm of holistic acceptability index. Finally, two simulation experiments with different weights showed the feasibility and effectiveness of the method.