Intelligent Scheduling Methodology for UAV Swarm Remote Sensing in Distributed Photovoltaic Array Maintenance

In recent years, the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) remote sensing technology has been widely used in the planning, design and maintenance of urban distributed photovoltaic arrays (UDPA). However, the existing studies rarely concern the UAV swarm scheduling problem when applied to remoting sensing in UDPA maintenance. In this study, a novel scheduling model and algorithm for UAV swarm remote sensing in UDPA maintenance are developed. Firstly, the UAV swarm scheduling tasks in UDPA maintenance are described as a large-scale global optimization (LSGO) problem, in which the constraints are defined as penalty functions. Secondly, an adaptive multiple variable-grouping optimization strategy including adaptive random grouping, UAV grouping and task grouping is developed. Finally, a novel evolutionary algorithm, namely cooperatively coevolving particle swarm optimization with adaptive multiple variable-grouping and context vector crossover/mutation strategies (CCPSO(-mg-cvcm)), is developed in order to effectively optimize the aforementioned UAV swarm scheduling model. The results of the case study show that the developed CCPSO(-mg-cvcm) significantly outperforms the existing algorithms, and the UAV swarm remote sensing in large-scale UDPA maintenance can be optimally scheduled by the developed methodology.