IJCAS

Most of the existing target tracking schemes based on proportional navigation guidance laws require information on target’s acceleration to device their tracking strategies. Acceleration is computed or estimated continuously at each step to guide the interceptor. However, computation of acceleration is time consuming and often leads to inaccuracy, especially when the target is high maneuvering. Keeping this in view, a proportional navigation based guidance law for the interception of a high maneuvering target is presented that does not require estimation of the target’s acceleration to generate guidance command. The method is based on anticipating target’s trajectory using simple linear extrapolation and rotational correction. The interceptor predicts next position of the target and continuously adjusts its acceleration command to move towards the future position of the target. This simple modification not only helps in improving the time to intercept but also reduces number of target misses. Further, it is easier to implement for real time applications due to computational convenience. Performance of the method is compared with some of the most efficient navigation guidance laws with respect to the time taken in interception, distance traversed and the path followed by the interceptor. In addition, proof of convergence is provided. Simulation results are further verified through hardware implementation on wheeled mobile robots and results are quite encouraging."

Keywords: Proportional navigation, robot motion planning, target tracking, wheeled mobile robot.