Pursuit on a Graph Using Partial Information

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

7-2015

Abstract

The optimal control of a "blind" pursuer searching for an evader moving on a road network and heading at a known speed toward a set of goal vertices is considered. To aid the "blind" pursuer, certain roads in the network have been instrumented with Unattended Ground Sensors (UGSs) that detect the evader's passage. When the pursuer arrives at an instrumented node, the UGS therein informs the pursuer if and when the evader visited the node. The pursuer's motion is not restricted to the road network. In addition, the pursuer can choose to wait/loiter for an arbitrary time at any UGS location/node. At time 0, the evader passes by an entry node on his way towards one of the exit nodes. The pursuer also arrives at this entry node after some delay and is thus informed about the presence of the intruder/evader in the network, whereupon the chase is on - the pursuer is tasked with capturing the evader. Because the pursuer is "blind", capture entails the pursuer and evader being collocated at an UGS location. If this happens, the UGS is triggered and this information is instantaneously relayed to the pursuer, thereby enabling capture. On the other hand, if the evader reaches one of the exit nodes without being captured, he is deemed to have escaped. We provide an algorithm that computes the maximum initial delay at the entry node for which capture is guaranteed. The algorithm also returns the corresponding optimal pursuit policy.

Comments

The "Link to Full Text" on this page opens or downloads the e-print version of the work at the arXiv repository.

Furnished version was submitted to arXiv.org on 29 Sep 2014. Posted at under Creative Commons as Public Domain. CC PD

The final conference paper appears in the ACC 2015 proceedings, and is available to IEEE subscribers as cited below.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1409.8159

Source Publication

arXiv [math.OC]

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