Abstract
This paper investigates the formation tracking control problem of a group of underactuated surface vessels (USVs) in the presence of model uncertainties and environmental disturbances. Additional constraints, such as collision avoidance, heterogeneous limited communication range and input saturation are also considered. A modified barrier Lyapunov function (BLF) is introduced to achieve the connectivity preservation, the collision avoidance and the distributed formation tracking. Extended state observer (ESO) is employed to estimate total disturbances consisting of environmental disturbances and model uncertainties. Auxiliary variables are introduced to deal with the underactuated problem and input saturation. A distributed controller is developed for each USV. Using the Lyapunov method analyze the stability of the system, it is proven that all signals are bounded and tracking errors converge to a neighborhood of the origin. Simulation results show that the proposed controller is practicable and effective.
Highlights
Formation tracking control of multiple underactuated surface vessels (USVs) has aroused great interest in recent years, owing to the fact that a team of USVs working together can accomplish more challenging missions than a single USV, such as surveillance, autonomous exploration, reconnaissance and perimeter security
A nonlinearly transformed formation error without considering input saturation was developed in [14]; collision-avoiding, connectivity-preserving and limited communication ranges were considered simultaneously, and a distributed controller using the transformed error was designed for each USV
The control objective is to design a distributed controller for the ith USV to track the leader with model uncertainties, input saturation and limited communication ranges
Summary
Formation tracking control of multiple underactuated surface vessels (USVs) has aroused great interest in recent years, owing to the fact that a team of USVs working together can accomplish more challenging missions than a single USV, such as surveillance, autonomous exploration, reconnaissance and perimeter security. A cooperative controller for a group of N USVs with limited sensing ranges was proposed in [11]; a novel potential function was used to solve the collision avoidance problem. A nonlinearly transformed formation error without considering input saturation was developed in [14]; collision-avoiding, connectivity-preserving and limited communication ranges were considered simultaneously, and a distributed controller using the transformed error was designed for each USV. In this paper we simultaneously consider model uncertainties, environmental disturbances, input saturation, collision avoidance and the limitations of communication distance.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
