Path planning for information acquisition and evasion using marsupial vehicles

This paper considers a path planning problem with two marsupial vehicles (one carrier vehicle and one passenger vehicle that is deployed by the carrier vehicle) exploring a planar area. This work is motivated by multi-agent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions in contested environments. The vehicles are heterogeneous, e.g., the carrier vehicle is faster than the passenger vehicle or the passenger vehicle possesses better sensors than the carrier vehicle. The vehicles are to gather a finite amount of information about an object of interest using their sensors while minimizing the likelihood of their detection by an opponent. Necessary conditions for optimal solutions are given and straight line travel for both vehicles is shown to be optimal. The results are illustrated in several simulation examples.