Pursuit Strategy to Capture High-Speed Evaders Using Multiple Pursuers

Abstract

A novel cooperative pursuit strategy is presented in this paper that contributes to capture a high-speed evader using multiple pursuers. Owing to its superiority in terms of speed, contemporary works have elucidated that a high-speed evader demands multiple pursuers to capture, but struggled to establish a promising strategy. A recent work also challenged the claims of a formation (perfectly encircled formation) that was said to ensure capture. It was shown that there exists an escape strategy for a perfectly encircled formation. In this paper, a cooperative pursuit strategy is presented for multiple pursuers using overlapping Apollonius circles around an evader. An equally competent counterstrategy for an evader is also derived using the geometric properties of Apollonius circles. The strategies are evaluated for both holonomic and nonholonomic systems and the corresponding capturability sets are shown in empirical form. The parameters that have to be considered for the construction of a capturability set are also studied. The results obtained from numerous simulations demonstrate the performance of the cooperative pursuit strategy and the counterstrategy of a high-speed evader.