Abstract
In recent years, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms have gained
traction in diverse fields, such as disaster relief and agricultural
production. However, programming tasks for UAV swarms presents
significant challenges due to their scale, task complexity, and the need
for autonomy and collaboration. To address these issues, we propose
SwarmL, a task description language specifically designed for
orchestrating UAV swarm operations, accompanied by its runtime
interpreter. SwarmL features several key attributes: (1) a clear task
decomposition framework with a “Main-Task-Behavior-Action” structure
and “init-goal-routine” control flow; (2) integration of trained AI
policies into swarm task execution; (3) support for concurrent
operations through language primitives like “each” and
“||”, enabling concise descriptions of multi-level
concurrency among groups, UAVs, and devices; and (4) collaborative
capabilities via a blackboard system that facilitates autonomous
communication among UAVs. To illustrate the usability of SwarmL and its
interpreter, we present a search-and-delivery task within the Airsim
simulator, successfully integrating policies from the DQN reinforcement
learning algorithm. This example demonstrates effective concurrent
management, allowing multiple UAVs to execute tasks simultaneously while
enhancing cooperation between search and delivery UAVs through the
blackboard system.