Multipursuer Interdiction Guidance Against Stationary Targets With Inter-Pursuer Collision Avoidance

A multipursuer interdiction mission against a stationary target is considered in this article, where the key requirement is to achieve a desired formation around the target simultaneously. The problems of controlling the terminal angle and final time have been mainly dealt with separately in existing literature. The proposed multiphase interdiction guidance algorithm addresses the challenges in satisfying both objectives together and allows pursuers to approach prespecified insertion points on circular trajectories surrounding the target at desired terminal angles in the interval (<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$-\pi, \pi$</tex-math></inline-formula>] at the desired final time. The developed selection criteria of pursuers' initial heading angles and the guidance laws in the “Orientation phase” and the “Standard PPN phase” help ensure that the desired terminal angle is achieved, while the “Roaming phase” facilitates attaining the desired final time. In addition, a collision avoidance module is integrated into the developed interdiction guidance to avoid imminent inter-pursuer collisions. Thus, realizing an all-aspect approach in a final time-constrained way following PN-based guidance for effectively containing a target while also ensuring collision-free trajectories is the main contribution of this article. The effectiveness of the developed guidance algorithm is demonstrated using extensive numerical simulations in multipursuer environments considering first-order vehicle dynamics corresponding to a small fixed-wing pursuer unmanned vehicles and noisy sensor measurements. The possibility of extending the developed guidance strategy to the slower moving target interdiction scenario is also explored using the notion of predicted intercept point.