A novel event-triggered robust neural formation control for USVs with the optimized leader–follower structure

Abstract

In this note, one focuses on the application of the event-triggered mechanism into the formation control system of the underactuated surface vehicles (USVs). To avoid the possible singularity problem, a novel fleet control model of the leader–follower structure is established in the Cartesian coordinate frame. The innovation of this design is that the information status between the leader and the follower could be acquired continuously and intuitively. Furthermore, a practical event-triggered robust neural control is developed by utilizing the robust neural damping technique and the input event-triggered rule. When the event-triggered threshold is satisfied, the state variables and the control input could be reset or updated aperiodically. That can effectively reduce the occupancy of the communication network from the controller to the actuator and facilitate its application in the practical engineering. In this algorithm, only four adaptive updated parameters are required in the adaptive model. Such design could compensate the gain uncertainties and the environmental disturbances. Based on the Lyapunov theory, considerable efforts have been made to illustrate that all signals in the closed-loop system are the semi-global uniformly ultimately bounded(SGUUB). Finally, numerical simulations are conducted to demonstrate the validity of the proposed scheme.