Realization of pursuit-evasion games with unmanned aerial vehicles

Multi-agent pursuit-evasion games are a common way to describe problems in topics like police missions, surveillance, or warfare. Since many agents are involved in such problems, a game-theoretical solution seems reasonable. Game-theoretical solution approaches are generally very complex, especially in games with more than two agents, as it is the case in this paper. More and more unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), in particular multi-rotors, are used in such applications because of their high maneuverability in all three dimensions. Especially in dangerous missions and applications UAVs excel, as they do not risk the life of the pilot. Tele-operated UAVs still require a pilot which has to be trained to do a task and a constant radio link between the pilot and the vehicle has to be maintained. An autonomous agent, able of performing the task of cooperative pursue and evasion can substitute the pilot. In this work, a realization of cooperative pursuit-evasion games with UAVs is presented. A real-time implementation is proposed, enabling a game-theoretical solution of the regarded problem. The applicability was proven during several real outdoors flight experiments with a hex-rotor UAV. Furthermore, the results obtained by the flight experiments were compared to simulations of the same games. Although, the most experimental results met the reference, disturbances like strong wind, wind gusts and sensor uncertainties affected the results significantly.