Hybrid swarm intelligent algorithm for multi-UAV formation reconfiguration

Formation flight of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) utilizes reconfiguration procedures to handle a variety of emergencies, such as collision avoidance, malfunctions, fuel savings, and member replacement. As UAVs have limited computing power and energy resources, it is necessary to optimize the control inputs to reduce the distance travelled by UAVs while reducing the computing costs during formation reconfiguration. In this paper, the problem of multi-UAV reconfiguration is decoupled into two stages: task assignment and control input optimization of UAVs. For a solution to the above problem, we propose an adaptive hybrid particle swarm optimization and differential evolution algorithm (AHPSODE) to optimize minimize the distance of the total movement and reduce the computing cost of formation reconfiguration. Based on the idea of receding horizon control (RHC) and the nonlinear model of multi-UAV formation reconfiguration, an RHC controller using AHPSODE is designed to optimize the control input of the UAV group to obtain the shortest movement distance, and this method can reduce the computation time. We use the CEC 2017 test suit to test the performance of our proposed AHPSODE algorithm, and simulate the AHPSODE-based RHC controller to manage formation reconfiguration. The results show that our proposed AHPSODE performed well in convergence and accuracy and the RHC controller is effective.