The coordination of heterogeneous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for complex, multi-stage tasks presents a significant challenge in robotics and autonomous systems. Traditional linear models often fail to capture the emergent synergistic effects and dynamic nature of multi-agent collaboration. To address these limitations, this paper proposes a novel hierarchical framework based on a Mission Chain (MC) concept. We systematically define and model key elements of multi-agent collaboration, including Mission Chains (MCs), Execution Paths (EPs), Task Networks (TNs), and Solution Spaces (SSs), creating an integrated theoretical structure. Based on this framework, we formulate the problem as a Sensor–Effector–Target Assignment challenge and propose a Marginal Return-Based Heuristic Algorithm (MRBHA) for efficient dynamic task allocation. Simulations demonstrate that our proposed MRBHA achieves a substantially higher total expected mission value—outperforming standard greedy and random assignment strategies by 14% and 77%, respectively. This validates the framework’s ability to effectively capitalize on synergistic opportunities within the UAV network. The proposed system provides a robust and scalable solution for managing complex missions in dynamic environments, with potential applications in search-and-rescue, environmental monitoring, and intelligent logistics.

Effective situation awareness relies on the robust processing of high-dimensional data streams generated by onboard sensors. However, the application of deep generative models to extract features from complex UAV sensor data (e.g., GPS, IMU, and radar feeds) faces two fundamental challenges: critical training instability and the difficulty of representing multi-modal distributions inherent in dynamic flight maneuvers. To address this, this paper proposes a novel unsupervised sensor data processing framework to overcome these issues. Our core innovation is a deep generative model, VAE-WRBM-MDN, specifically engineered for stable feature extraction from non-linear time-series sensor data. We demonstrate that while standard Variational Autoencoders (VAEs) often struggle to converge on this task, our introduction of Weighted-uncertainty Restricted Boltzmann Machines (WRBM) for layer-wise pre-training ensures stable learning. Furthermore, the integration of a Mixture Density Network (MDN) enables the decoder to accurately reconstruct the complex, multi-modal conditional distributions of sensor readings. Comparative experiments validate our approach, achieving 95.69% classification accuracy in identifying situational patterns. The results confirm that our framework provides robust enabling technology for real-time intelligent sensing and raw data interpretation in autonomous systems.

Aerial situational awareness (SA) faces significant challenges due to inherent complexity involving large-scale dynamic entities and intricate spatio-temporal relationships. While deep learning advances SA for specific data modalities (static or time-series), existing approaches often lack the holistic, vision-centric perspective essential for human decision-making. To bridge this gap, we propose a unified GNN-CV framework for operational-level SA. This framework leverages mature computer vision (CV) architectures to intelligently process radar-map-like representations, addressing diverse SA tasks within a unified paradigm. Key innovations include methods for sparse entity attribute transformation graph neural networks (SET-GNNs), large-scale radar map reconstruction, integrated feature extraction, specialized two-stage pre-training, and adaptable downstream task networks. We rigorously evaluate the framework on critical operational-level tasks: aerial swarm partitioning and configuration recognition. The framework achieves an impressive end-to-end recognition accuracy exceeding 90.1%. Notably, in specialized tactical scenarios featuring small, large, and irregular flight intervals within formations, configuration recognition accuracy surpasses 85.0%. Even in the presence of significant position and heading disturbances, accuracy remains above 80.4%, with millisecond response cycles. Experimental results highlight the benefits of leveraging mature CV techniques such as image classification, object detection, and image generation, which enhance the efficacy, resilience, and coherence of intelligent situational awareness.