2025/11/19 by Mammadov, Kamal, Ranasinghe, Damith C.
Engineering · #Adaptive Control of Nonlinear Systems #Extremum Seeking Control Systems #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Guidance and Control Systems #Multiagent Systems (cs.MA)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2511.15036
openalex publication_date 2025/11/19 · openalex created_date 2025/11/23 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This paper presents a novel strategy for a multi-agent pursuit-evasion game involving multiple faster pursuers with heterogenous speeds and a single slower evader. We define a geometric region, the evader's safe-reachable set, as the intersection of Apollonius circles derived from each pursuer-evader pair. The capture strategy is formulated as a zero-sum game where the pursuers cooperatively minimize the area of this set, while the evader seeks to maximize it, effectively playing a game of spatial containment. By deriving the analytical gradients of the safe-reachable set's area with respect to agent positions, we obtain closed-form, instantaneous optimal control laws for the heading of each agent. These strategies are computationally efficient, allowing for real-time implementation. Simulations demonstrate that the gradient-based controls effectively steer the pursuers to systematically shrink the evader's safe region, leading to guaranteed capture. This area-minimization approach provides a clear geometric objective for cooperative capture.