A cooperative Homicidal Chauffeur game

We address a pursuit-evasion problem involving an unbounded planar environment, a single evader and multiple pursuers moving along curves of bounded curvature. The problem amounts to a multiagent version of the classic Homicidal Chauffeur problem; we identify parameter ranges in which a single pursuer is not sufficient to guarantee evader capture. We propose a novel multi-phase cooperative strategy in which the pursuers move in specific formations and confine the evader to a bounded region. The proposed strategy is inspired by the hunting and foraging behaviors of various fish species. We characterize the required number of pursuers for which our strategy is guaranteed to lead to confinement. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.