Guidance control to capture a target using communication between the autonomous aerial vehicle and remote sensors

In this study, the authors introduce a three‐dimensional (3D) discrete‐time motion camouflage (MC) control to make an autonomous aerial vehicle (AAV) chase a manoeuvring target while not rotating the bearing line between the AAV and the target. This study handles a scenario in which the AAV can measure the target's position using remote sensors (e.g. ground‐based laser systems) only. Since there exists communication delay between the remote sensors and the AAV, time delay exists between the time instant when the target's position is measured and the time instant when the AAV applies controllers based on sensor measurements. Considering a scenario where the time delay is accessible, the authors develop a 3D MC control based on the time delay explicitly. They prove that as long as several assumptions are satisfied, the angular rate of bearing line is exactly zero at all sampling indexes while the distance between the target and the AAV monotonically decreases as time elapses. The effectiveness of the 3D discrete‐time MC control is verified utilising extensive MATLAB simulations.