Differential Games and Manual Control

Variational methods are used to solve a particular pursuit-evasion differential game. The problem involves the determination of optimal strategies for both the pursuer and evader. The performance measure is the miss distance at some fixed terminal time. Both pursuer and evader have limited control energy. The performance of a trained research pilot, for both single and two-axis control tasks is compared with that of the optimal pursuer. State vector display and ``quickened´´ display are discussed. The results suggest that differential game problems could be quite useful in the study of manual control.