Nonlinear Cyclic Pursuit Based Cooperative Target Monitoring

This paper presents a nonlinear cyclic pursuit based target monitoring strategy for a group of autonomous vehicles. The vehicles are modeled as unicycles and are assumed to be heterogeneous. Each vehicle follows the next neighbor as well as the target. The detailed analysis is done for stationary target and the effectiveness of the proposed strategy against a moving target is shown through simulation. At equilibrium, the vehicles capture the target and move along concentric circles in a rigid polygonal formation around the target with equal angular speeds. A necessary condition for the existence of equilibrium formation is derived. Local stability analysis is carried out for homogeneous agents. Simulation results demonstrate the objective of the proposed method and verifies the derived results.