A Graph Search Algorithm for Indoor Pursuit / Evasion

Abstract

Using concepts from both robotics and graph theory, we formulate the problem of indoor pursuit / evasion in terms of searching a graph for a mobile evader. We present an offline, greedy, iterative algorithm which performs guaranteed search, i.e. no matter how the evader moves, it will eventually be captured; in fact our algorithm can be applied to either an adversarial (actively trying to avoid capture) or randomly moving evader. Furthermore the algorithm produces an internal search (the searchers move only along the edges of the graph, teleporting is not used) and can accommodate extended (across nodes) visibility and finite or infinite evader speed. We present search experiments for several indoor environments, some of them quite complicated, in all of which the algorithm succeeds in clearing the graph (i.e. capturing the evader).