Navigation control for tracking and catching a moving target

This paper presents feedback control laws for pursuing and catching a fly ball by taking Chapman´s hypothesis into the closed-loop system connecting perceptions and actions. Through the analysis of the closed-loop system, we make it clear that the hypothetical trajectory Chapman showed is a special dynamic solution of the closed-loop system. Moreover, using a motion-analyzing technique over a finite time, it is shown that the proposed feedback control laws make it possible to generate a pursuing trajectory automatically that a fly ball can be caught in the right place and at the right time. It is also shown that the pursuing trajectory gets closer to the one Chapman showed as a feedback gain increases. In addition, we compare the proposed feedback control laws with Proportional Navigation (PN) which is the most common navigation technique for tracking a moving target, and demonstrate that the proposed control laws perform better than PN.