Towards the development of an autonomous interdiction capability for unmanned aerial systems

As well-known, interdiction operations in adversarial environments can be quite challenging. With the advancement in technologies and applications involving unmanned aerial systems, an efficient autonomous aerial interdiction mission has been identified in literature as one of the pivotal elements. Effective interdiction usually requires a group of pursuers (as opposed to a single one), which enables achieving a certain formation around the target restricting its further maneuver. This paper presents a coordinated trajectory-shaping guidance strategy for a group of two autonomous pursuers, which can easily be generalized for a multi-pursuer case. Specific challenges in the group maneuvering include coordinated control of the arrival time and final relative attitude. The paper develops the corresponding algorithms and demonstrates their effectiveness in a set of computer simulations featuring different engagement geometries. It also addresses feasibility of obtained solutions from the standpoint of their applicability on board of a small unmanned aerial vehicle with a limited computational capability.