The Homicidal Chauffeur

The journey begins... So yesterday I went to the U of A and spent some time talking with Dr. Manne (a physics professor). Apparently, he has been analyzing (playing around with) what is known as the "Homicidal Chauffeur Problem."

The problem is as follows. There is butler in a large fast car. He wants to kill (run-over) a pedestrian. The pedestrian is quite a bit more nimble (it can change direction more quickly) but much slower than the butler in the car. The question is this: under what conditions (nimbleness/speed) and with what strategy can the butler always catch/kill the pedestrian?

Basically, this is a predator/prey pursuit type problem where the idea is to figure out the best pursuit strategies for the predator (the butler) and the best evasion strategies for the prey (the pedestrian). Anyway, Dr. Manne has run some simulations of this problem where the prey/pedestrian and the predator/butler have various maximums speeds and accelerations (nimbleness). Interestingly, it turns out that that if the predator has a maximum speed of say 1,000,000,000 miles per hour but a finite acceleration, and the prey has say a maximum speed of 1 mile per hour but an infinite acceleration (i.e. the prey can make very sharp turns), the predator will never be able to catch the prey.

So what am I doing? Since Dr. Manne wants to expand the simulation and look at variations of the problem, I will be doing quite a bit of programming/making pretty graphs.

Ultimately, the final goal is to actually answer the original question (i.e. what are the best strategies for predator and prey) and then see how our answer compares to the strategies used by predators and prey in the real world.

That's about it for now!

Sean Campbell