Event-triggered containment control of networked underactuated unmanned surface vehicles with finite-time convergence

Abstract

This study investigates the containment problem of networked underactuated unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) guided by multiple virtual leaders using an event-triggering control mechanism. Each USV is subject to external disturbance and internal model uncertainties. First, a finite-time observer is introduced to identify the model uncertainties and the unmeasured USV velocities. Then, a guidance law is designed to generate a series of virtual reference points for each USV so that these points are contained within the convex hull spanned by the virtual leaders. Meanwhile, the path update law for each virtual leader is proposed. Next, to steer the USVs towards the corresponding reference points, an event-triggered-based control law is developed for each USV using the observed data, in which the event-triggering technique is applied in the channel of sensor-to-controller to reduce communication burden while ensuring the similar control performance with the continuous mechanism. Besides, a first-order filter is introduced to provide the derivatives of the virtual control laws. Finally, stability analysis shows that the closed-loop system is finite-time stable and all error signals converge to a small bound within finite time. Comparative simulations are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed event-triggered containment control method.