Given a mapped environment, we formulate the problem of visually tracking and following an evader using a probabilistic framework. In this work, we consider a non-holonomic robot with a limited visibility depth sensor in an indoor environment with obstacles. The mobile robot that follows the target is considered a pursuer and the agent being followed is considered an evader. We propose a probabilistic framework for both the pursuer and evader to achieve their conflicting goals. We introduce a smart evader that has information about the location of the pursuer. The goal of this variant of the evader is to avoid being tracked by the pursuer by using the visibility region information obtained from the pursuer, to further challenge the proposed smart pursuer. To validate the efficiency of the framework, we conduct several experiments in simulation by using Gazebo and evaluate the success rate of tracking an evader in various environments with different pursuer to evader speed ratios. Through our experiments we validate our hypothesis that a smart pursuer tracks an evader more effectively than a pursuer that just navigates in the environment randomly. We also validate that an evader that is aware of the actions of the pursuer is more successful at avoiding getting tracked by a smart pursuer than a random evader. Finally, we empirically show that while a smart pursuer does increase it's average success rate of tracking compared to a random pursuer, there is an increased variance in its success rate distribution when the evader becomes aware of its actions.
We consider the problem of having a team of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) pursue a second team of evaders while concurrently building a map in an unknown environment. We cast the problem in a probabilistic game theoretical framework, and consider two computationally feasible greedy pursuit policies: local-mar and global-max. To implement this scenario on real UAVs and UGVs, we propose a distributed hierarchical hybrid system architecture which emphasizes the autonomy of each agent, yet allows for coordinated team efforts. We describe the implementation of the architecture on a fleet of UAVs and UGVs, detailing components such as high-level pursuit policy computation, map building and interagent communication, and low-level navigation, sensing, and control. We present both simulation and experimental results of real pursuit-evasion games involving our fleet of UAVs and UGVs, and evaluate the pursuit policies relating expected capture times to the speed and intelligence of the evaders and the sensing capabilities of the pursuers.