Resource Welfare Based Distributed Task Allocation Scheme for Multiple UAVs

摘要

We address a task allocation problem for multiple UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) that cooperatively perform a search and destroy mission in an unknown region. In this context, a team of heterogeneous UAVs carrying different types and amounts of resources is deployed to search targets and required to destroy as many targets as possible in a given mission time. The UAVs are limited in communications and sensing capabilities. A group of UAVs may need to be formed to attack a target because individual UAVs may not have sufficient resources for the execution of the attack. Instantaneous task allocation approaches that consider only current tasks cannot effectively account for the unpredictability of future tasks in an uncertain dynamic environment. In this paper, we propose a distributed task allocation algorithm based on social welfare used in economics. The approach we present enables the UAV team to effectively utilize resources by balancing resource consumptions and consequently destroy more targets by retaining more UAVs available for attack tasks. Simulation experiments were conducted in various conditions to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach. The results show that our approach outperforms the instantaneous auction based task allocation method.