Distributed prescribed-time leader–follower formation control of surface vehicles with unknowns and input saturation

Abstract

In this paper, the prescribed-time leader–follower formation control problem is solved for surface vehicles (SVs) suffering from input saturation and unknowns including uncertain dynamics and external disturbances. Based on the information of neighboring vehicles, a distributed prescribed-time observer for estimating states of the leader is proposed. By virtue of input saturation, the saturation errors and system unknowns are observed by a reduced-order prescribed-time estimator. Moreover, to realize the satisfactory formation error constraints, a time scale transformation function based prescribed-time prescribed performance function is proposed, together with error transformations, the transient performance of formation errors is improved. Lyapunov stability theorem and backstepping method prove that the closed-loop system is prescribed-time stable. Simulations are given to illustrate the effectiveness of proposed theoretical results.