Holiday

October 24, 2005

My first holiday in quite some time has just begun. I don’t have any concrete plans for the fortnight, however I do plan to do as much work on CIC as I can while still relaxing. I haven’t had a lot of time recently to work on CIC, and I’ve spent a lot of my time trying to work out an equation for counter-missile interception. I thought I’d post the problem and see if anyone can come up with a solution. As far as I can see, this is a non-trivial problem, and requires quite a complex equation to calculate. My closest attempt so far has me factoring a polynomial equation, which I’m currently reading up on as I haven’t done it since high-school. The problem is described below.

I have 2 missiles, A and B.
Missile A has a current velocity (Va) and direction (Da), a known constant acceleration (Aa) and a known position (Pa).
Missile B has a current velocity (Vb), a known maximum constant acceleration (Bb) and known position (Pb).

What needs to be calculated is the direction to fire B (Db) so that it can accelerate at it’s maximum acceleration and intercept missile A. It can be assume that the current velocity of B is in the direction that will be calculated, to simplify the problem. This equation must be calculated in 3D with the resultant direction having 3 components, x, y and z. I believe there may be multiple results within a solution, it would be best to have all of these results, however the result that is the shortest distance from B would usually be used.

If anyone has any questions please ask, otherwise please post your answer or email me at adoulin@hotmail.com.

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Filed under:
CIC, General, Personal by Doolwind

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  • http://www.jamietelford.com Jamie

    Crazy.. The Americans had the same problem with their patriot to scud missle interceptors and as far as I know they couldnt do it either ;)

    perhaps you could use a flocking type situation where the missile pulls alongs side the other and blows up.. causing splash damage.. :)

    Anyhow! Hi to ya Alistair and have a gooooood holiday!

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/3513580 Doolwind

    Hi Jamie,

    Thanks for the idea. That was similar to my idea to make life easier….once the missile is close enough, it detonates or fires a laser to destroy the ‘close’ missiles. It saves having to be exactly on target.

    For now I’ve just put a simple algorithm in so I can move on to other things. I’m now working on having the counter missiles actually destroying their targets, then it’s time for some AI to automatically shoot down the incoming missiles.