Minimum effort pursuit/evasion guidance with specified miss distance

The paper proposes an approach to the design of guidance algorithms that is applicable both for pursuit as for evasion guidance and is based on optimal linear quadratic control. In contrast to the traditional approach of minimizing, respectively maximizing the miss distance, while penalizing the effort, the proposed method imposes an upper, respectively a lower bound on the miss distance, while minimizing the effort. The optimal guidance law can be derived under the assumption of zero, first, or higher order dynamics of the own vehicle, just as in the case of classical optimal guidance, and analytic expressions are available for zero or first order dynamics. In addition, it is possible to take into account in the guidance algorithm, any available information about the dynamics of the target.