Time-efficient Target Guarding using Constrained Optimization in 3D Space

This paper presents a time-efficient solution to the target guarding problem in the presence of the obstacles. The problem is defined as a multiple pursuer, one evader zero-sum game where the pursuers try to intercept the evader before it reaches a target. The presented method is a fast, numerical, constrained optimization technique that plans the path of all pursuers. The short execution time (under 10 ms) of this method makes it suitable to fast pursuits, possibly online applications, where the delay of the processing time plays a major effect on the pursuer success even in highly cluttered maps. The proposed method proved effective in simulated scenarios.