Path planning is a challenging, computationally complex optimization task in high-dimensional scenarios. The metaheuristic algorithm provides an excellent solution to this problem. The dung beetle optimizer (DBO) is a recently developed metaheuristic algorithm inspired by the biological behavior of dung beetles. However, it still has the drawbacks of poor global search ability and being prone to falling into local optima. This paper presents a multi-strategy enhanced dung beetle optimizer (MDBO) for the three-dimensional path planning of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). First, we used the Beta distribution to dynamically generate reflection solutions to explore more search space and allow particles to jump out of the local optima. Second, the Levy distribution was introduced to handle out-of-bounds particles. Third, two different cross operators were used to improve the updating stage of thief beetles. This strategy accelerates convergence and balances exploration and development capabilities. Furthermore, the MDBO was proven to be effective by comparing seven state-of-the-art algorithms on 12 benchmark functions, the Wilcoxon rank sum test, and the CEC 2021 test suite. In addition, the time complexity of the algorithm was also analyzed. Finally, the performance of the MDBO in path planning was verified in the three-dimensional path planning of UAVs in oil and gas plants. In the most challenging task scenario, the MDBO successfully searched for feasible paths with the mean and standard deviation of the objective function as low as 97.3 and 32.8, which were reduced by 39.7 and 14, respectively, compared to the original DBO. The results demonstrate that the proposed MDBO had improved optimization accuracy and stability and could better find a safe and optimal path in most scenarios than the other metaheuristics.

Aspect Sentiment Triplet Extraction (ASTE) is a challenging task in natural language processing (NLP) that aims to extract triplets from comments. Each triplet comprises an aspect term, an opinion term, and the sentiment polarity of the aspect term. The neural network model developed for this task can enable robots to effectively identify and extract the most meaningful and relevant information from comment sentences, ultimately leading to better products and services for consumers. Most existing end-to-end models focus solely on learning the interactions between the three elements in a triplet and contextual words, ignoring the rich affective knowledge information contained in each word and paying insufficient attention to the relationships between multiple triplets in the same sentence. To address this gap, this study proposes a novel end-to-end model called the Dual Graph Convolutional Networks Integrating Affective Knowledge and Position Information (DGCNAP). This model jointly considers both the contextual features and the affective knowledge information by introducing the affective knowledge from SenticNet into the dependency graph construction of two parallel channels. In addition, a novel multi-target position-aware function is added to the graph convolutional network (GCN) to reduce the impact of noise information and capture the relationships between potential triplets in the same sentence by assigning greater positional weights to words that are in proximity to aspect or opinion terms. The experiment results on the ASTE-Data-V2 datasets demonstrate that our model outperforms other state-of-the-art models significantly, where the F1 scores on 14res, 14lap, 15res, and 16res are 70.72, 57.57, 61.19, and 69.58.

Path planning is one of the key issues in the research of unmanned aerial vehicle technology. Its purpose is to find the best path between the starting point and the destination. Although there are many research recommendations on UAV path planning in the literature, there is a lack of path optimization methods that consider both the complex flight environment and the performance constraints of the UAV itself. We propose an enhanced version of the Chimp Optimization Algorithm (TRS-ChOA) to solve the UAV path planning problem in a 3D environment. Firstly, we combine the differential mutation operator to enhance the search capability of the algorithm and prevent premature convergence. Secondly, we use improved reverse learning to expand the search range of the algorithm, effectively preventing the algorithm from missing high-quality solutions. Finally, we propose a similarity preference weight to prevent individuals from over-assimilation and enhance the algorithm’s ability to escape local optima. Through testing on 13 benchmark functions and 29 CEC2017 complex functions, TRS-ChOA demonstrates superior optimization capability and robustness compared to other algorithms. We apply TRS-ChOA along with five well-known algorithms to solve path planning problems in three 3D environments. The experimental results reveal that TRS-ChOA reduces the average path length/fitness value by 23.4%/65.0%, 8.6%/81.0%, and 16.3%/41.7% compared to other algorithms in the three environments, respectively. This indicates that the flight paths planned by TRS-ChOA are more cost-effective, smoother, and safer.

Airport gate assignment is a critical issue in airport operations management. However, limited airport parking spaces and rising fuel costs have caused serious issues with gate assignment. In this paper, an effective multiobjective optimisation model for gate assignment is proposed, with the optimisation objectives of minimising real-time flight conflicts, maximising the boarding bridge rate, and minimising aircraft taxiing fuel consumption. An improved tunicate swarm algorithm based on cosine mutation and adaptive grouping (CG-TSA) is proposed to solve the airport gate assignment problem. First, the Halton sequence is used to initialise the agent positions to improve the initial traversal and allocation efficiency of the algorithm. Second, the population as a whole is adaptively divided into dominant and inferior groups based on fitness values. To improve the searchability of the TSA for the dominant group, an arithmetic optimisation strategy based on ideas related to the arithmetic optimisation algorithm (AOA) is proposed. For the inferior group, the global optimal solution is used to guide the update to improve the convergence speed of the algorithm. Finally, the cosine mutation strategy is introduced to perturb the optimal solution and prevent the target from falling into the local extrema as a way to efficiently and reasonably allocate airport gates. The CG-TSA is validated using benchmark test functions, Wilcoxon rank-sum detection, and CEC2017 complex test functions and the results show that the improved algorithm has good optimality-seeking ability and shows high robustness in the multiobjective optimisation problem of airport gate assignment.

A wireless sensor network (WSN) is a distributed network system composed of a great many sensor nodes that rely on self-organization. The random deployment of WSNs in city planning often leads to the problem of low coverage of monitoring areas. In the construction of smart cities in particular, a large number of sensor nodes need to be deployed to maintain the reception, processing, and transmission of data throughout the city. However, the uneven distribution of nodes can cause a lot of wasted resources. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a WSN coverage optimization model based on an improved marine predator algorithm (IMPA). The algorithm introduces a dynamic inertia weight adjustment strategy in the global exploration and local exploitation stages of the standard marine predator algorithm to balance the exploration and exploitation capabilities of the algorithm and improve its solution accuracy. At the same time, the improved algorithm uses a multi-elite random leading strategy to enhance the information exchange rate between population individuals and improve the algorithm’s ability to jump out of the local optimum. The optimization experiment results of 11 benchmark test functions and part of the CEC2014 test functions show that the optimization performance of the improved algorithm is significantly better than the standard marine predator algorithm and other algorithms in the literature. Finally, the improved algorithm is applied to the WSN coverage optimization problem. The simulation results demonstrate that the IMPA has a better coverage rate than other metaheuristic algorithms and other improved algorithms in the literature for solving the WSN coverage optimization problem.