Pursuit-evasion games of multiple cooperative pursuers and an evader: A biological-inspired perspective

Abstract

Multi-player pursuit-evasion games are fascinating in both nature and the artificial world. In these games, the purpose of pursuers is to capture the evader who attempt to avoid being captured. This article solves the pursuit-evasion games with communication constraints, and obtains the pursuit and escape strategies of all players and the corresponding capture zones. The successful capture conditions of multiple pursuers are defined according to the laws of nature, including distance conditions and quantity conditions. From the biological-inspired perspective, we formulate a concise dynamic and design the pursuit and escape strategies. The collision avoidance, gathering, and direction alignment between pursuers are realized by introducing repulsion, attraction, and alignment functions in the pursuit strategy. Furthermore, the influence of parameter variation on the system’s dynamic performance is investigated by introducing the distance-cost, energetic-cost, and time-cost. The phase-transition lines that separate the whole space into the capture zone and escape zone are obtained by analysing various pursuit-evasion scenarios. The results are consistent with natural observations and disclose some natural laws in the predation scene of terrestrial creatures.