Mosquito-inspired swarming for decentralized pursuit with autonomous vehicles
Daigo Shishika, Derek A. Paley · 2017
Inspired by the swarming behavior of male mosquitoes that aggregate to attract and subsequently pursue a female mosquito, we study how oscillatory motion in autonomous swarming vehicles helps the success of target capture. We consider the scenario in which multiple guardians with limited perceptual range are deployed to protect an area from an aerial intruder. The intruder becomes a target once it enters the perceptual range of a guardian and, when a guardian becomes a pursuer, it speeds up and chases the target. We focus on the strategy in the swarming phase, when the intruder has not yet been perceived by any of the guardians. In the parameter space consisting of the intruder's speed and guardians' ability (i.e., maximum acceleration and perceptual range) we identify necessary and sufficient conditions for target capture. We further compare circular and radial swarming motion and its effect on successful target capture. For the application to autonomous aerial vehicles, we propose a control algorithm that achieves swarming motion while also avoiding collisions. The theoretical results are demonstrated by experiments with a swarm of quadrotors.