Optimal Strategies for Multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in a Pursuit/Evasion Differential Game

摘要

WITH the development of multiagent pursuit-evasion scenarios, some researchers have noted target aircraft escaping from attackers, as well as designed cooperative strategies or guidance laws [1-6]. To obtain more applicable results about the target escaping, a three-agent pursuit-evasion engagement, called the target-attacker-defender (TAD) scenario, was addressed in [7]. Compared with the pursuit-evasion scenarios consisting of target/evader and attacker/ pursuer scenarios, the new engagement added a target-friendly aircraft called the defender to cooperate with the target, whereas the attacker was the opponent. The attacker wanted to capture the target, whereas the goal of the target was to evade the attacker The defender cooperated with the target to intercept the attacker before the target was captured by the attacker [8-11]. The line-of-sight (LOS) guidance law for the defender was considered in [12], in which a predetermined trajectory was formed for the target to watch out for the defender to avoid capture. If the defender was launched by a platform or was slower than the attacker, it was difficult for the defender to stay on/ride the LOS between the attacker and the target; in which case, the LOS guidance law might not be recommended. To overcome this issue, the target's instantaneous optimal heading used optimal control in [5,13-17], which made the target lure the attacker into the path of the defender to safeguard itself and allowed a slower or more distant defender to intercept the attacker successfully.