Distributed Attacker Assignment and Interception Control in Multi-Agent Target-Attacker-Defender Games
Abstract
This paper addresses the Target-Attacker-Defender (TAD) game within a planar environment, focusing on the protection of a stationary target against incoming threats. To compensate for potential speed disadvantages of the defenders, we leverage geometric pre-positioning within an annular defense perimeter. The problem is formulated as an area interception problem, for which we propose a distributed multi-agent algorithm consisting of two primary modules: target allocation and interception control. For target allocation, an equitable region partitioning strategy is employed to divide the defense area into annular sectors and assign defenders to attackers. Under specified angular-separation and parameter conditions, the proposed partitioning mechanism ensures that each defender is assigned at most one attacker, thereby reducing the complexity of multi-agent assignment. For the control layer, movement protocols based on zero-sum differential games and coverage optimization are designed, achieving Nash equilibrium strategies while maintaining effective barrier coverage. Numerical simulations show that the proposed method enables slower defenders to intercept faster attackers through proactive deployment and maintains nearly constant local computation time as the swarm size increases.
Related
- Safe Distributed Generalized Nash Equilibrium Seeking via Control Barrier Functions
- Numerical approximation of distributed optimal control problems governed by linear thermo-poroelasticity
- Distributed Geometric Optimization and Control of Rigid Differential-Drive Formations from Relative-Position Measurements
- Distributed Model Predictive Control with Connectivity-based Contracts
- Certificate-Carrying Distributed Model Predictive Control on Product Manifolds with SO(3)
BibTeX
@misc{fan2026distributed,
title = {{Distributed Attacker Assignment and Interception Control in Multi-Agent Target-Attacker-Defender Games}},
author = {Pengyang Fan and Shaoqing Zhang and Chao Zhai and Weiguo Xia},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.32244},
eprint = {2610.32244},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.32244},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Distributed Attacker Assignment and Interception Control in Multi-Agent Target-Attacker-Defender Games
AU - Pengyang Fan
AU - Shaoqing Zhang
AU - Chao Zhai
AU - Weiguo Xia
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/23
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.32244
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.32244
AB - This paper addresses the Target-Attacker-Defender (TAD) game within a planar environment, focusing on the protection of a stationary target against incoming threats. To compensate for potential speed disadvantages of the defenders, we leverage geometric pre-positioning within an annular defense perimeter. The problem is formulated as an area interception problem, for which we propose a distributed multi-agent algorithm consisting of two primary modules: target allocation and interception control. For target allocation, an equitable region partitioning strategy is employed to divide the defense area into annular sectors and assign defenders to attackers. Under specified angular-separation and parameter conditions, the proposed partitioning mechanism ensures that each defender is assigned at most one attacker, thereby reducing the complexity of multi-agent assignment. For the control layer, movement protocols based on zero-sum differential games and coverage optimization are designed, achieving Nash equilibrium strategies while maintaining effective barrier coverage. Numerical simulations show that the proposed method enables slower defenders to intercept faster attackers through proactive deployment and maintains nearly constant local computation time as the swarm size increases.
ER -