Optimizing Trajectories for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Patrolling the Border

Authors

Chris Kiekintveld, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow
Vladik Kreinovich, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow
Octavio Lerma

Publication Date

3-2011

Comments

Technical Report: UTEP-CS-11-03a

Published in: Ronald R. Yager, Marek Z. Reformat, Shalnaz N. Shahbazova, and Sergei Ovchinnikov (eds.), Proceedings of the World Confrence on Soft Computing, San Francisco, CA, May 23-26, 2011

Abstract

At first glance, most aspects of border protection activity look like classical examples of zero-sum games, in which the interests of the two sides are exactly opposite. This is how such situations are planned now: this is how border patrol agents are assigned to different segments of the border, this is how routes of coast guard ships are planned, etc. However, there is a big difference between such situations and the traditional zero-sum games: in the traditional zero-sum games, it is assumed that we know the exact objective function of each participant; in contrast, in border protection planning (e.g., in counter-terrorism planning), the adversary's objective function is rarely known in precise terms; at best, we have the description of this objective function in terms of words from natural language. In this paper, on an example of an UAV patrolling the border, we show how fuzzy techniques can help in planning border protection strategies under such uncertainty.