Collision-free path control in contest environment using circular geometric attributes

This paper is concerned with vehicle motion control and collision avoidance inside contested enclosed areas. Enclosed areas are generated by overlaying multiple circles of different radii, and represent safe paths as well as adversarial regions that must be avoided by the vehicles. Within the areas, a small arc known as “designated edge” is the exit curve line that the vehicle must reach without colliding with other arcs. The strategy is to move tangentially to the nearby arcs while incorporating repulsion along the line-of-sight to the nearest threat position. The vehicle is required to reach the designated edge without incurring collisions, a weighted sum is proposed as the control input for the vehicle. Numerical examples are conducted on different trade-offs between collision avoidance and reaching the exit edge, and analysis is made on smoothness and reduction of trajectories.