Worst-Case Scenario Evasive Strategies in a Two-on-One Engagement Between Dubins’ Vehicles With Partial Information

Abstract

In this letter, we consider the problem of pursuit-evasion between two pursuers against an evader with the agents modelled as Dubins’ vehicle and having partial information regarding each other’s motion. A novel, two-phase, evasive strategy based on worst-case scenario planning and proximity-based maneuvers is proposed. In the first phase, the evader assumes the pursuers to be holonomic and executes a best response strategy. An analytic and geometric approach is used to obtain the evader’s strategy. In the second phase, the evader switches to movement along high-curvature paths to side-step the pursuers when they are in proximity of the evader in an attempt to delay capture. We also propose an approximation to compute the evader strategy in the first phase, which enables it to be applicable against multiple non-holonomic pursuers. Illustrative simulation results are given.