Cooperative versus decentralized strategies in three-pursuer single-evader games
This addresses a theoretical problem in multi-agent systems for researchers, but it is incremental as it builds on known decentralized strategies.
The paper tackled the problem of whether cooperation among pursuers reduces capture time in a three-pursuer single-evader game, showing that cooperation cannot reduce capture time by more than half compared to a decentralized strategy, and this bound is tight.
The value of cooperation in pursuit-evasion games is investigated. The considered setting is that of three pursuers chasing one evader in a planar environment. The optimal evader trajectory for a well-known decentralized pursuer strategy is characterized. This result is instrumental to derive upper and lower bounds to the game length, in the case in which the pursuers cooperate in the chasing strategy. It is shown that the cooperation cannot reduce the capture time by more than one half with respect to the decentralized case, and that such bound is tight.