Coevolutionary genetic programming for large-scale dynamic multi-aircraft task allocation

Multi-aircraft task allocation (MATA) plays a vital role in improving mission efficiency under dynamic conditions. This paper proposes a novel coevolutionary genetic programming (CoGP) framework that automatically designs high-performance reactive heuristics for dynamic MATA problems. Unlike conventional single-tree genetic programming (GP) methods, CoGP jointly develops two interacting populations, i.e., task prioritizing heuristics and aircraft selection heuristics, to explicitly model the coupling between these two interdependent decision phases. A comprehensive terminal set is constructed to represent the dynamic states of aircraft and tasks, whereas a low-level heuristic template translates developed trees into executable allocation strategies. Extensive experiments on public benchmark instances simulating post-disaster emergency delivery demonstrate that CoGP achieves superior performance compared with state-of-the-art GP and heuristic methods, exhibiting strong adaptability, scalability, and real-time responsiveness in complex and dynamic rescue environments.