Engagement Zone Defense of a Non-Maneuvering Evader
I. Weintraub, A. Von Moll, D. Casbeer, E. Garcia, M. Pachter
Published in Conference on Control Technology and Applications, 2021
This paper considers a three agent scenario consisting of a pursuer, evader, and a defender. The pursuer’s objective is to capture the non-maneuvering evader in minimum time while a defender aims at keeping the pursuer inside his circular engagement zone for as long as possible; the pursuer is considered to be faster than both the evader and the defender. Using the calculus of variations the optimal control problem for the defender which maximizes the amount of time that the pursuer is inside his area of effect is posed and solved. In the event that the evader is captured by the pursuer before the pursuer escapes the area of effect of the defender, some suboptimal strategies of the defender provide equivalent contact time. The derivation of the headings which the defender can take to maximally contact the pursuer is presented, along with examples which highlight the importance of the initial conditions of the engagement scenario.