Consensus of multiple autonomous underwater vehicles with double independent Markovian switching topologies and timevarying delays**Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51679057, 51309067, and 51609048), the Outstanding Youth Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Providence of China (Grant No. JC2016007), and the Natural Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province, China (Grant No. E2016020).

Abstract

A new method in which the consensus algorithm is used to solve the coordinate control problems of leaderless multiple autonomous underwater vehicles (multi-AUVs) with double independent Markovian switching communication topologies and time-varying delays among the underwater sensors is investigated. This is accomplished by first dividing the communication topology into two different switching parts, i.e., velocity and position, to reduce the data capacity per data package sent between the multi-AUVs in the ocean. Then, the state feedback linearization is used to simplify and rewrite the complex nonlinear and coupled mathematical model of the AUVs into a double-integrator dynamic model. Consequently, coordinate control of the multi-AUVs is regarded as an approximating consensus problem with various time-varying delays and velocity and position topologies. Considering these factors, sufficient conditions of consensus control are proposed and analyzed and the stability of the multi-AUVs is proven by Lyapunov–Krasovskii theorem. Finally, simulation results that validate the theoretical results are presented.