UAV Task Assignment and Path Planning: Problem Definition, Integration, and Challenges

ABSTRACT With the growing application of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems in urban low‐altitude environments, flight optimization is becoming more large‐scale, and complex UAV collaboration is expected to dominate future airspace operations. Ensuring efficient and safe operations in complex urban environments poses significant challenges for UAV flight optimization. From a spatial optimization perspective, this article reviews recent advances in task assignment, path planning, and their integration. It summarizes representative strategies for static and dynamic task assignment, reviews path planning approaches and multi‐UAV coordination mechanisms under different spatial modeling paradigms, and analyzes integrated optimization frameworks. In addition, the applicability of different methodological categories is compared across varying problem characteristics. Finally, key challenges in current UAV flight optimization are identified, and future research directions are outlined.