Application of distributed auction to multi-UAV task assignment in agriculture

Abstract

Abstract: This paper addresses the multiple farming task assignment for agricultural UAVs by presenting a decentralized auction algorithm, where computation and information are distributed among multiple parallel processing units (UAVs). The scheme iterates between bundle construction phase and two conflict resolution phases, and then converges to a task allocation and route plan simultaneously. In the bundle construction stage, each UAV groups the tasks with commonalities by considering its own capacities of flight endurance, weight load, battery, data storage, etc. In the following conflict resolution stages, the winning UAVs for tasks are determined by the information exchanged between UAVs. Later, the proposed algorithm is shown to have a low demand for communication and is proved to be able to achieve 50% optimality. Finally, an application of collecting the data of ground sensor nodes (including moving nodes) is used to assess the performance of the proposed scheme. Numerical experiments confirm superior convergence properties and performance of the proposed algorithm when compared with existing task-allocation algorithms. Keywords: unmanned aerial vehicle, farming task allocation, route plan, distributed, auction,agricultural aviation DOI: 10.33440/j.ijpaa.20180101.0008 Citation: Hu J, Yang J C. Application of distributed auction to multi-UAV task assignment in agriculture. Int J Precis Agric Aviat, 2018; 1(1): 44–50.