Aerial monitoring of slow moving convoys using elliptical orbits

Abstract

This article proposes a novel vector field based guidance scheme for tracking and surveillance by an aerial agent of a convoy moving along a possibly non-linear trajectory on the ground. The scheme first computes a time varying ellipse that encompasses all the targets in the convoy using a simple regression based algorithm. It then ensures convergence of the aerial agent to a trajectory that repeatedly traverses this moving ellipse. The correct tracking behavior of the scheme is rigorously established along with error bounds, based on the perturbation theory of ordinary differential equations. It is supported by MATLAB®simulations and a hardware implementation, the details of which are provided along with a link to the video of an actual experiment.