Nondominated Strategies for Cautious to Courageous Aerial Navigation

Abstract

Recently, the safe navigation problem of an aircraft, which aims to intercept a nonaggressive adversary aircraft while avoiding a threatening energy-bleeding coasting missile, has been solved. This problem has been posed as a constrained game problem involving minimization of the navigation distance to the target. In contrast, the current paper deals with a novel definition of the navigation problem that involves two self-conflicting objectives. Namely, it deals with the pilot’s tradeoff between minimizing the distance to the target and maximizing the closest approach from the threatening missile. The suggested problem has no unique optimal solution but rather a set of Pareto-optimal strategies, which should reflect various cautious to courageous behaviors. To solve the aforementioned problem, a novel solution approach and an associated generalization analysis method are introduced. While not claiming to find the Pareto-optimal solutions, the proposed approach provides satisficing solutions. Using simulations, it is shown that the obtained set of controllers constitutes a set of nondominated solutions with generalization characteristics. The obtained solutions are associated with various cautious to courageous behaviors. This allows pilots to choose, in real time, a navigation strategy according to their desired behavior by setting a subjective safety-level preference.