Optimization-based Control for Bearing-only Target Search with a Mobile Vehicle

Abstract: This work aims to design an optimization-based controller for a discrete-time Dubins vehicle to approach a target with unknown position as fast as possible by only using bearing measurements. To this end, we propose a bi-objective optimization problem, which jointly considers the performance of estimating the unknown target position and controlling the mobile vehicle to a known position, and then adopt a weighted sum method with normalization to solve it. The controller is given based on the solution of the optimization problem in ties with a least-square estimate of the target position. Moreover, the controller does not need the vehicle's global position information. Finally, simulation results are included to validate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.