Encirclement of Moving Targets Using Noisy Range and Bearing Measurements

This paper presents theoretically justified controllers that use relative range and bearing measurements to steer a team of autonomous vehicles, operating without inertial position information, circular trajectories around constant-acceleration, constant-velocity, or stationary target. An extended Kalman filter is used improve the noisy estimate velocity moving These estimated values are in control laws encircle constant-velocity targets. Lyapunov techniques utilized show vehicle will converge desired formations. Additionally, cooperating vehicles shown formation with equal temporal spacing using each vehicle’s target’s define common reference frame. Numerical simulations validate efficacy these laws.