Anti-disturbance cooperative formation containment control for multiple autonomous underwater vehicles with collision-free and actuator saturation constraints

Abstract

This article investigates the formation containment control (FCC) problem of multiple autonomous underwater vehicles system (MAUVS) in the simultaneous presence of disturbances, collision avoidance between autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and actuator saturation constraints. Firstly, for the purpose of enhancing the resisting disturbance capability of the MAUVS, the extended state observers are designed to estimate the total disturbance comprised of internal uncertainties and external interferences in real time. In order to hinder the occurrence of complexity explosion during the backstepping design, tracking differentiators are adopted to provide estimates for the derivative of the virtual control signals. Furthermore, the auxiliary system is constructed for reducing the influence of the actuator saturation on the MAUVS. Potential functions are integrated into the designed FCC strategy, so that the collisions between AUVs can be effectively avoided while the MAUVS achieving formation containment. Afterwards, via resorting to Lyapunov stability theory, it is demonstrated that the formation tracking errors and containment errors are uniformly ultimately bounded. Lastly, the comparative simulation results are illustrated to validate the feasibility of the presented anti-disturbance FCC scheme with collision-free and anti-saturation.