Hamilton-Jacobi formulation for reach-avoid differential games

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Hamilton-Jacobi framework for solving complex reach-avoid differential games with nonlinear dynamics, ensuring continuous value functions and Hamiltonians, and demonstrates its effectiveness in aircraft collision avoidance scenarios.

Contribution

It develops a general, numerically stable approach for reach-avoid problems in nonlinear dynamic games, extending beyond linear system limitations.

Findings

Applicable to nonlinear systems with continuous Hamiltonians

Successfully applied to aircraft collision avoidance with wind disturbances

Handles target window constraints effectively

Abstract

A new framework for formulating reachability problems with competing inputs, nonlinear dynamics and state constraints as optimal control problems is developed. Such reach-avoid problems arise in, among others, the study of safety problems in hybrid systems. Earlier approaches to reach-avoid computations are either restricted to linear systems, or face numerical difficulties due to possible discontinuities in the Hamiltonian of the optimal control problem. The main advantage of the approach proposed in this paper is that it can be applied to a general class of target hitting continuous dynamic games with nonlinear dynamics, and has very good properties in terms of its numerical solution, since the value function and the Hamiltonian of the system are both continuous. The performance of the proposed method is demonstrated by applying it to a two aircraft collision avoidance scenario under target window constraints and in the presence of wind disturbance. Target Windows are a novel concept in air traffic management, and represent spatial and temporal constraints, that the aircraft have to respect to meet their schedule.