Abstract

This paper presents a wolf-pack-inspired distributed encirclement framework for heterogeneous unmanned aerial vehicle–unmanned surface vehicle (UAV–USV) teams operating with limited communication and intermittent visual sensing. The proposed growth-based visual connectivity encirclement (GB-VCE) method separates high-level role evolution from low-level motion execution. Each agent accumulates local evidence from target observation, visual connectivity contribution, motion stability, and platform characteristics, enabling smooth transitions among leader, relay, searcher, and encircler roles. Visual links and relay relations are treated as coordination resources rather than auxiliary sensing constraints, allowing target-related information to propagate through the team without centralized fusion or persistent all-to-all communication. Simulations with paired random seeds show that GB-VCE improves encirclement accuracy, target-information coverage, convergence consistency, and heterogeneous role complementarity compared with fixed-role, static-leader, UAV-only, and USV-only baselines. The results indicate that biomimetic role growth and visual connectivity preservation provide an interpretable and robust coordination principle for air–sea cooperative encirclement.

IPC Classification

Keywords