Optimal Dubins Paths to Intercept a Moving Target on a Circle
S. G. Manyam, D. Casbeer, A. Von Moll, Z. Fuchs
Published in American Control Conference, 2019
We present a trajectory planning problem for a pursuer to intercept a target traveling on a circle. The pursuer considered here have limited yaw rate, and therefore the trajectories should satisfy the kinematic constraints. We assume that the distance between initial position of the pursuer and any point on the target circle is greater than four times the minimum turn radius of the pursuer, and prove the continuity of the Dubins paths of type Circle-Straight line-Circle with respect to the position on the target circle. This is used to prove that the optimal interception paths is a Dubins path, and present an iterative scheme to find the interception point on the target circle.