A Modified Self-Adaptive Sparrow Search Algorithm for Robust Multi-UAV Path Planning.

With the advancement of technology, the collaboration of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (multi-UAVs) is a general trend, both in military and civilian domains. Path planning is a crucial step for multi-UAV mission execution, it is a nonlinear problem with constraints. Traditional optimization algorithms have difficulty in finding the optimal solution that minimizes the cost function under various constraints. At the same time, robustness should be taken into account to ensure the reliable and safe operation of the UAVs. In this paper, a self-adaptive sparrow search algorithm (SSA), denoted as DRSSA, is presented. During optimization, a dynamic population strategy is used to allocate the searching effort between exploration and exploitation; a t-distribution perturbation coefficient is proposed to adaptively adjust the exploration range; a random learning strategy is used to help the algorithm from falling into the vicinity of the origin and local optimums. The convergence of DRSSA is tested by 29 test functions from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Congress on Evolutionary Computation(CEC) 2017 benchmark suite. Furthermore, a stochastic optimization strategy is introduced to enhance safety in the path by accounting for potential perturbations. Two sets of simulation experiments on multi-UAV path planning in three-dimensional environments demonstrate that the algorithm exhibits strong optimization capabilities and robustness in dealing with uncertain situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]