Computation-Aware Bearings-Only Target Localization and Circumnavigation in 2D

A novel framework for computation-aware guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) is introduced that allows a mobile autonomous agent to act on intermediate iterates of its computations as it moves. In particular, we consider an iterative optimization algorithm running onboard the agent, and each iterate of the algorithm is the most recent estimate of an optimum, while a convergence rate bounds the distance from that iterate to an optimum. The agent implements a GNC system that acts on its most recent iterate in a way that is modulated by its convergence rate; an agent takes less decisive action for iterates far from an optimum and takes more decisive action for iterates close to an optimum. Then, we apply this framework to solve the problem of bearings-only target localization and circumnavigation in 2 dimensions in a computation-aware manner, and we bound the error in control performance that is introduced by using online computations. Simulation results are presented to confirm the high performance of this framework for this problem.