A distributed task reassignment method in dynamic environment for multi-UAV system

This paper considers the task reassignment problem for distributed multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (multi-UAV) systems in dynamic environment. For a dynamic reassignment problem in a multi-UAV system, the task information may be subject to different dynamic events, and many existing task allocation algorithms require much computation and communication resource to achieve a feasible solution. Hence, this paper proposes a distributed method to cope with dynamic events that occur online during the execution of original schedules. First, a distributed framework for determining the processing strategy according to the types of dynamic events is introduced. Second, a partial reassignment algorithm (PRA) is proposed to support the framework and an incremental subteam formation mechanism and a partial releasing mechanism are developed to release the computation and communication burden. Furthermore, a modified inclusion phase to maximize assignment (MIP-MA) is also proposed in PRA to maximize the number of task allocations. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the proposed method is able to provide a conflict-free solution with less data exchanges and runtime.