A variant of cyclic pursuit for target tracking applications: theory and implementation

This paper presents a variant of the cyclic pursuit strategy that can be used for target tracking applications. Cyclic pursuit has been extensively used in multi-agent systems for a variety of applications. In order to monitor a target point or to track a slowly moving vehicle, we propose to use a group of non-holonomic vehicles. At equilibrium, the vehicles form a rigid polygonal around the target while encircling it. Necessary conditions for the existence of equilibrium and the stability of equilibrium formations are analysed considering unicycle model of the vehicles. The strategy is then applied to miniature aerial vehicles (MAV) represented by 6-DOF dynamical model. Finally the results are verified in a hardware in-loop simulator in real time, which included all on-board electronics of the MAVs.