Adaptive Multi-Strategy Particle Swarm Optimization Path Planning Algorithm for Multi-Terrain Post-Disaster Relay Rescue

Post-disaster rescue scenarios often involve complex and variable terrains, imposing heterogeneous mobility requirements on different transport modes. Single-type vehicles face challenges in independently completing comprehensive rescue tasks. This study addresses the critical problem of coordinating heterogeneous aerial and ground vehicles to collaboratively plan relay rescue routes. To tackle the NP hard multi-terrain, multi-vehicle, and multi-route path planning problem, we propose a New Adaptive Multi-Strategy Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm (AMS-PSO-NEW). The algorithm features a synergistic integration of differential evolution’s multi-strategy mutation, SHADE-based adaptive parameter control, population diversity monitoring with restart mechanisms, and multi-level local search. A sequential hybrid mechanism is designed in which DE-generated trial vectors serve as reference positions for PSO velocity updates, enabling balanced global exploration and local exploitation. By leveraging adaptive parameter tuning, success history memory, and diverse population maintenance, AMS-PSO-NEW effectively overcomes premature convergence and low accuracy issues typical in discrete combinatorial optimization using traditional PSO, achieving a balanced global exploration and local exploitation. Performance validation is conducted over six rescue scenarios varying in scale and complexity, benchmarking AMS-PSO-NEW against nine algorithms: PSO, GA, NSGA-II, GWO, DE, ABC, CS, Q-learning, and MIP. Results demonstrate superior performance across four metrics (rescue success rate, average rescue time, total cost, and fairness), with significant improvements in high-complexity environments.