Coordinating Defender Path Planning for Optimal Target-Attacker-Defender Game

We present a two vehicle, cooperating path planning problem in adversarial environments. The first vehicle is the lead vehicle and its path is prescribed to accomplish a certain mission,and there exists multiple attackers along this path. The second vehicle is a defender that travelsalong the lead vehicle, and it is responsible to protect the lead vehicle from the attackers. The defender launches defender missile to intercept the attackers before it reaches the lead vehicle. The defender and lead vehicle cooperate to maximize the distance between the lead vehicle and the point of interception, while the attacker tries to minimize this distance. This sub problem is modeled as Target-Attacker-Defender (TAD) game with an objective to maximize the terminal separation distance between lead vehicle and attacker. We aim to generate an optimal pathfor the defender, such that if the TAD game is played at any point along the path, the defender should be optimally positioned that maximizes the terminal separation distance. We reduce this problem to a discrete space, and methodically pose it as a shortest path problem on a graph, the solution of which gives the discrete optimal path for the defender.

DOI: 10.2514/6.2019-0388