Using Differential Evolution to Improve Pheromone-based Coordination of Swarms of Drones for Collaborative Target Detection

In this paper we propose a novel algorithm for adaptive coordination of drones, which performs collaborative target detection in unstructured environments. Coordination is based on digital pheromones released by drones when detecting targets, and maintained in a virtual environment. Adaptation is based on the Differential Evolution (DE) and involves the parametric behaviour of both drones and environment. More precisely, attractive/repulsive pheromones allow indirect communication between drones in a flock, concerning the availability/unavailability of recently found targets. The algorithm is effective if structural parameters are properly tuned. For this purpose DE combines different parametric solutions to increase the swarm performance. We focus first on the study of the principal parameters of the DE, i.e., the crossover rate and the differential weight. Then, we compare the performance of our algorithm with three different strategies on six simulated scenarios. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the approach.