Game-theoretic approach to peer-to-peer confrontations

Two opposing teams of unmanned systems with similar capabilities are operating with different objectives. A daunting challenge is to derive in real-time an effective set of strategies and actions that will satisfy operational constraints, guarantee success by accomplishing goals, and simultaneously mitigate disruptions. Other technical challenges include mission tasking times, time delays, and communication and mission tradeoffs. In this paper, we present a game theoretic approach to solving such confrontational problems by successively deriving multi-objective payoffs, individual vehicle controls, guaranteed game evaluations and decision management. Multi-objective payoffs are derived using various minimum and maximum approximations. Vehicle differential controls are derived using Lyapunov-like strategies. The "strategic" decision making is derived by approximating a game solution and checking conditional guarantees. We illustrate the approach with several representative examples.