Defense against Adversarial Swarms with Parameter Uncertainty

Claire Walton; Isaac Kaminer; Qi Gong; Abram H Clark; Theodoros Tsatsanifos

doi:10.3390/s22134773

Defense against Adversarial Swarms with Parameter Uncertainty

Sensors (Basel). 2022 Jun 24;22(13):4773. doi: 10.3390/s22134773.

Authors

Claire Walton^{1

2}, Isaac Kaminer³, Qi Gong⁴, Abram H Clark⁵, Theodoros Tsatsanifos³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX 78249, USA.
² Department of Mathematics, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX 78249, USA.
³ Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA 93943, USA.
⁴ Department of Applied Mathematics, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA.
⁵ Department of Physics, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA 93943, USA.

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of optimal defense of a high-value unit (HVU) against a large-scale swarm attack. We discuss multiple models for intra-swarm cooperation strategies and provide a framework for combining these cooperative models with HVU tracking and adversarial interaction forces. We show that the problem of defending against a swarm attack can be cast in the framework of uncertain parameter optimal control. We discuss numerical solution methods, then derive a consistency result for the dual problem of this framework, providing a tool for verifying computational results. We also show that the dual conditions can be computed numerically, providing further computational utility. Finally, we apply these numerical results to derive optimal defender strategies against a 100-agent swarm attack.

Keywords: optimal control; parameter uncertainty; swarming.

MeSH terms

Gravitation*
Uncertainty

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the Office of Naval Research under Grant No. N0001421WX01974. Additionally, this work was supported by the Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Research, Consortium for Robotics Unmanned Systems Education and Research at the Naval Postgraduate School.