Information consensus-based formation control of unmanned surface vehicles

Abstract

This paper investigates the problem of cooperative formation control of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs). According to the second-order consensus protocol with a virtual-leader, a distributed control law is derived, in which the consensus formation motion information can only be obtained by a part of USVs. Taking advantages of the shared information between adjacent multi-USVs, the USVs can control self-motion trajectory in a concerted cooperation way, meanwhile, they can also follow the virtual-leader movement along a desired route. The error function is defined and the stability of the system is proved based on the Lyapunov stability principle. Simulation results are presented and discussed for validating the proposed control strategy.