In the context of area coverage tasks in three-dimensional space, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) clusters face challenges such as uneven task assignment, low task efficiency, and high energy consumption. This paper proposes an efficient mission planning strategy for UAV clusters in area coverage tasks. First, the area coverage search task is analyzed, and the coverage scheme of the task area is determined. Based on this, the cluster task area is divided into subareas. Then, for the UAV cluster task allocation problem, a step-by-step solution is proposed. Afterward, an improved fuzzy C-clustering algorithm is used to determine the UAV task area. Furthermore, an optimized particle swarm hybrid ant colony (PSOHAC) algorithm is proposed to plan the UAV cluster task path. Finally, the feasibility and superiority of the proposed scheme and improved algorithm are verified by simulation experiments. The simulation results show that the proposed method achieves full coverage of the task area and efficiently completes the task allocation of the UAV cluster. Compared with related comparison algorithms, the method proposed in this paper can achieve a maximum improvement of 21.9% in balanced energy consumption efficiency for UAV cluster task search planning, and the energy efficiency of the UAV cluster can be improved by up to 7.9%.

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm intelligence technology has shown unique advantages in agricultural and forestry disaster detection, early warning, and prevention with its efficient and precise cooperative operation capability. In this paper, a systematic application strategy of UAV swarms in forest fire detection is proposed, including fire point detection, fire assessment, and control measures, based on the fusion of particle swarm optimization (PSO) and the artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm. The UAV swarm application strategy provides optimized paths to quickly locate multiple mountain forest fire points in 3D forest modeling environments and control measures based on the analysis of the fire situation. This work lays a research foundation for studying the precise application of UAV swarm technology in real-world forest fire detection and prevention.

The formation operation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is a current research hotspot, particularly in specific mission scenarios where UAV formations are required to cooperatively arrive at designated task areas to meet the needs of coordinated operations. This paper investigates the issues of cooperative arrival and energy consumption optimization for UAV formations in such scenarios. First, focusing on rotorcraft UAVs, the flight energy consumption optimization model and cooperative arrival model are derived and constructed. Next, to address the challenges in solving these models, the multi-objective non-convex functions are transformed into single-objective continuous functions, thereby reducing computational complexity. Furthermore, an interior-point-method-based solving strategy is designed by estimating the initial values of the solving parameters. Finally, simulation experiments validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method. The experimental results show that when optimizing the energy consumption of a formation of five UAVs, the algorithm converges in just 16 iterations, demonstrating its suitability for practical applications.