MU-PTO: Multi-Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Supported Passive Tracking Optimization for Dynamic Maritime Lost Items

For the problem of passive localization of lost objects on the dynamic sea surface, a Multi-Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) supported Passive Tracking Optimization (MU-PTO) has been proposed, which mainly includes: firstly, a theory-driven passive localization method is designed to achieve information fusion among multi-UAVs based on the geometrical dilution of precision, and the theoretical derivation and analytical equations are given; secondly, a multi-UAV tracking optimization model based on the Improved Multi-Operator Differential Evolution (IMODE) algorithm is designed to achieve precise positioning during dynamic tracking. The results show that the positioning error in the initial state does not exceed 1.824 km, and the error can be reduced to within 1e-6 km with only 100 iterations of optimization.