Real-time interception performance evaluation of certain proportional navigation based guidance laws in aerial ground engagement

Proportional navigation guidance (PNG) law has been established as one of the efficient classes for interception in pursuit-evasion games. Several PNG techniques have been introduced to intercept slow and fast maneuvering targets but a limited study is reported for aerial vehicle interceptor and ground moving target engagement. Further, the interception performance evaluation and comparison of PNG techniques against a high maneuvering target in the air-ground engagement are not reported in the literature. In this paper, four well-known proportional navigation based guidance techniques, namely AAG, AIPNG, Modified AIPNG and ATPNG have been extended to three-dimensions for an unmanned aerial vehicle (quadcopter) to intercept a high maneuvering ground moving vehicle (target). The working environment is kept open and free from obstacles. The quadcopter is treated as an interceptor, while the non-holonomic ground moving robot is considered as a target. In this air-ground engagement, the interception performance of all four PNG techniques is evaluated and compared to each other in terms of the interception time, distance travelled and the trajectory generated by the quadcopter. The results are verified through simulation and hardware experiments. The experimental observations are further validated using statistical student t test. It has been observed in all simulation and real-time experimental results that the ATPNG technique is able to quickly intercept the target without missing the rendezvous point and outperforms the remaining techniques.