Evolutionary Task Allocation and Cooperative Control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Air Combat Applications

Abstract

Autonomous air combat of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is a typical and difficult problem that must be studied in the field of military intelligence. The UAVs are required to work together to accomplish different tasks in the air combat. In this note, both task allocation and cooperative control of UAVs are studied for air combat applications. A two-layer framework of the air combat is established containing a task allocation upper layer and a cooperative control lower layer. In the task allocation upper layer, an evolutionary task allocation strategy is proposed for UAVs to allocate tasks by considering their cooperative behavior. After the task allocation, the UAVs, which are allocated for the same task, form the same group. In the cooperative control lower layer, a cooperative control approach is proposed for groups of UAVs to maintain a desired formation to accomplish the corresponding task. The evolutionary stable state and stabilization of the UAVs are achieved. Finally, both Software-in-the-Loop and Model-in-the-Loop simulations are conducted based on the RflySim platform to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach and further display the multi-UAV air combat vision realistically.