Survival of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles by Luring Pursuers in Angle Constrained Interception

Abstract

In this paper, a sliding mode control-based cooperative guidance strategy for a team of two unmanned aerial vehicles (aircraft), which ensures their survival against pursuers, is proposed. The pursuing interceptors are assumed to employ augmented proportional navigation guidance. The cooperating aircraft maneuver in a way to lure their respective pursuers to an impact angle constrained collision. The problem of controlling impact angle is first transformed to that of tracking line-of-sight angle and its rate, and then the same is achieved by enforcing sliding mode on appropriate chosen switching surface. Furthermore, the allocation of aircraft’s lateral accelerations is performed in a way to minimize the instantaneous aerodynamic drag acting on both unmanned aerial vehicles. Numerical simulations are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed guidance strategy under different engagement geometries.