As UAV popularity soars, so does the mission planning associated with it. Classical planning approaches suffer from the triple problems of decoupling of task assignment and path planning, poor real-time and scalability, and limited adaptability. Aiming at these challenges, this paper proposes a multi-UAV real-time collaborative mission planning method based on UAV states. First, the employed Dubins path accurately represents the distance between tasks and satisfies curvature constraints without smoothing, thus achieving a coupled solution for task assignment and path planning. Then, a series of acceleration techniques are applied to guarantee the real-time performance of the method, including task clustering to reduce the decision space, allocation strategies with fewer iterations, and efficient distance cost calculation methods. To enhance robustness and adaptability, real-time assignment of new tasks and task reassignment due to the reduction of available UAVs are appropriately handled. Finally, simulations highlight that the proposed method only increases the path length by 9.57% compared to benchmark method, while achieving a 4–5 orders-of-magnitude improvement in planning speed, with a single mission planning of about 0.0003 s. Moreover, it easily scales to large-scale scenarios (0.0029 s, with 1000 UAVs and 25,000 tasks).

Utilizing thermal updrafts shows potential for enabling long-endurance cruising of fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles without energy consumption. This article presents a novel online method based on sparse identification of nonlinear dynamics (SINDy) approach to achievement identification of thermal sources in the atmosphere. Initially, the algorithm is incorporated into the upper-level planning system, interacting with the lower-level controller. Then, experiments are conducted through software-in-the-loop simulations (SITL) to validate the implementation of the proposed algorithm. It is found that direct observation of thermal sources through measurements using SINDy is unfeasible during straight and circular flight modes. Nevertheless, simulation analysis of the proposed approach indicates that under unobservable conditions, a portion of the parameters can still be identified. By comparing results obtained using the particle filter algorithm, this method is shown to accurately estimate the parameters with negligible errors under observability conditions. The novelty of this approach lies in its significant improvement of the localization accuracy of the thermal source, without the need for parameter adjustments in the algorithm. Finally, the proposed methods are integrated into commonly used hardware platforms, and their online feasibility is verified through hardware-in-the-loop simulations.

As UAV popularity soars, so does the mission planning associated with it. The classical approaches suffer from the triple problems of decoupled of task assignment and path planning, poor real-time performance and limited adaptability. Aiming at these challenges, this paper proposes a dynamic real-time multi-UAV collaborative mission planning algorithm based on Dubins paths under a distributed formation structure. Dubins path with multiple advantages bridges the gap between task assignment and path planning, leading to a coupled solution for mission planning. Then, a series of acceleration techniques, task clustering preprocessing, highly efficient distance cost functions, low-complexity and less iterative task allocation strategies, are employed to guarantee the real-time performance of the algorithms. To cope with different emergencies and their simultaneous extremes, real-time planning of emerging tasks and mission replanning due to the reduction of available UAVs are appropriately handled. Finally, the developed algorithm is comprehensively exemplified and studied through simulations, highlighting that the proposed method only sacrifices 9.57% of the path length, while achieving a speed improvement of 4-5 orders of magnitude over the simulated annealing method, with a single mission planning of about 0.0003s.