Manyam, Satyanarayana Gupta (Infoscitex corporation), Casbeer, David (Air force Research laboratories)

Intercepting a Target Moving on a Racetrack Path

Scheduled for presentation during the Regular Session "See and Avoid Systems II" (ThB1), Thursday, September 3, 2020, 15:40−16:00, Macedonia Hall

2020 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), September 1-4, 2020 (Postponed from June 9-12, 2020), Athens, Greece

This information is tentative and subject to change. Compiled on April 24, 2024

Abstract

We consider a continuous monitoring application where multiple agents coordinate their positions while traveling along a racetrack. In practice, agents may need to leave the loop for maintenance or recharging, and a new agent has to take its place. The focus of this paper is on the off-the-loop planner that generates a path back to the racetrack, such that the agent arrives to the loop at the appropriate (moving) point with the shortest possible path. Assuming the distance from pursuer's initial position to any location on the racetrack is greater than four times the turn radius of that agent, we develop a planner to find the shortest path that intercepts the moving point on the racetrack and satisfies the agent's kinematic constraints. To develop this planner, Dubins paths are considered, and we present algorithms to find the intercepting path to a point moving on a straight line or a circular arc. These algorithms are integrated together to find the path that intercepts a target moving in the racetrack pattern. We prove that the algorithm finds the optimal solution and demonstrate the results with a few examples.