Capturing a target with range only measurement

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of guiding a mobile robot towards a target using only range sensors. The bearing information is not available. The target can be stationary or moving. It can be the source of some gas leakage or nuclear radiation or it can be some landmark or beacon or any maneuvering vehicle. The mobile robot can be ground or aerial vehicle. In literature, many different strategies are proposed which use the range only measurement but they involve estimation of different parameters or have switching control strategy which makes them difficult to implement. We have proposed a strategy that can bring the robot arbitrarily close to the moving target. It is shown analytically that this strategies works for any initial condition of the robot with respect to the target. The results are validated through simulation.