“…Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) have played important roles in various underwater applications, e.g., ocean sampling, oceanographic survey and inspection, seafloor mapping and modeling, submarine mine neutralization, offshore oil and gas exploration [1,9,10,26,28]. To improve efficiency and to extend task capacity, many tasks in these applications involve collaboration of multiple AUVs in a certain formation [2,3,4,5,6,7,11,19].…”