Objectives  To study the target assignment in the formation reconfiguration of unmanned ships, a target assignment method is proposed.

  Methods  Firstly, a distance-based cost function is generated by the current positions of the unmanned ships and the fixed target points. Secondly, based on the auction theory and according to the rapidity requirement of the target assignment in the formation reconfiguration of the unmanned ship, an auction termination mechanism is proposed based on the maximum number of iterations for possible non-feasible solution in the assignment of the traditional auction algorithm, which disperses part of the simulations, thus shortening the assignment time.

  Results  Finally, the simulation results show that this proposed method can quickly give an optimized target assignment scheme for the formation reconfiguration of swarms of the unmanned ships when compared with the classical Hungarian method.

  Conclusions  The proposed method herein can provide an effective reference for the target assignment in the formation reconfiguration of swarms of the unmanned ships and for the study on the autonomous decision-making of the unmanned ships.