Quantum Annealing Algorithm for Solving Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Swarm Trajectory Planning Problem

In recent years, with the development of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technology and its widespread application in military, logistics, agriculture, and other fields, the problem of UAV swarm trajectory planning has received extensive attention. Traditional optimization algorithms such as simulated annealing, genetic algorithms, and particle swarm optimization can achieve good results in some cases. However, when dealing with larger and more complex UAV swarm tasks, they often face issues such as low computational efficiency and getting stuck in local optima. Quantum annealing, which has the unique advantage of quantum tunneling, can effectively avoid local optima. Therefore, this study proposes a UAV swarm trajectory planning algorithm based on quantum annealing. The trajectory planning problem is converted into a Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) problem. Using a two-stage processing strategy, the quantum annealing method clusters the task points and simulates the trajectory for each category, effectively reducing time complexity. Results show that quantum annealing has a higher probability of finding better paths than simulated annealing, demonstrating a better ability to escape the local optima problem. Additionally, the study considers four common scenarios that UAV swarms encounter during missions, designs corresponding dynamic task allocation schemes and modifies the objective function and constraints of quantum annealing. Results indicate that the UAV swarm trajectory planning algorithm can handle common scenarios effectively, ensuring that the UAV swarm can flexibly respond and efficiently complete tasks collaboratively.