Competing Swarms of Autonomous Vehicles: Intruders Versus Guardians

Abstract

We consider a competition between two swarms of aerial vehicles, where multiple intruder vehicles try to approach and then leave an area that multiple guardian vehicles are protecting. Preexisting swarming strategies for the guardians to maximize the probability of capturing a single intruder are summarized. This work considers the case where multiple intruders approach the protected area sequentially with varied time intervals, to study the impact of intrusion frequency on the probability of capture. In addition, we formulate a payoff function treating the competition as a zero-sum game, and use this function to design strategies for the intruders, i.e., how to optimize the time interval between intrusions. We propose an intrusion strategy and demonstrate its performance with numerical simulations.