LAUSR

This study deals with the task assignment problem in a heterogeneous unmanned aerial vehicle system under the multiple constraints of limited resources, effective task execution scope, obstacle avoidance and task priority. Considering the nonlinearity, multimoding and high complexity of the task assignment problem, many existing optimization methods may fall into local optimum and even fail to provide satisfactory solutions. To address the issues, the discrete adaptive search whale optimization algorithm is proposed. First, we present the obstacle-avoiding distance estimation method to provide precise task scenario information and reduce the computational complexity. Then, the crossover-based updating method is presented to enable the algorithm to solve discrete problems such as task assignment. In addition, the search intensity adaptive mechanism is presented to optimize and balance the exploration and exploitation intensities in the solution space reasonably, thereby achieving high-quality task assignment results quickly. Further, joint leadership mechanism and local search mechanism are proposed to enhance the exploration ability of the algorithm. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed algorithm.