Predefined-time formation control of NASVs with fully discontinuous communication: A novel hierarchical event-triggered scheme

Abstract

This paper investigates the predefined-time formation tracking problem of networked autonomous surface vehicles (NASVs) with external disturbances under limited communication resources. To solve this complicated problem, a novel hierarchical event-triggered control scheme with predefined-time stability is proposed, being consisted of the distributed event-triggered estimator with fully discontinuous communication and the local predefined-time controller to respectively estimate the virtual leader state information and regulate the local state of each autonomous surface vehicle. Particularly, the employed distributed event-triggered estimator can significantly reduce the control signals update frequency and the communication burden, and the local predefined-time controller based on the sliding manifold can guarantee that the system forms the designated formation and reaches a stable state within a predefined time in the settable time interval. On the basis of Lyapunov stability theory, the sufficient conditions for guaranteeing the predefined-time convergence and stability of the closed-loop system are derived. Finally, the simulation results are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.