Motion camouflage with sensorimotor delay

In recent work, a particular high-gain feedback law was shown to drive a pursuer-evader system arbitrarily close to a state of motion camouflage in finite time. However, data collected from bat-insect encounters, in which a strategy akin to motion camouflage is used by the bat to pursue the insect, reveal that a modest feedback gain is used, and significant sensorimotor delay is present. Therefore, we revisit our earlier analysis (in CDC 2006), but with sensorimotor delay incorporated into the model. We derive constraints among parameters such as feedback gain, sensorimotor delay, and relative speed, for which it is possible to guarantee performance of the feedback law in achieving motion camouflage. Besides helping us to better understand pursuit in nature, such pursuit laws have applications in missile guidance and unmanned vehicle control.