Straight line path following for formations of underactuated surface vessels under influence of constant ocean currents

Abstract

Abstract-The problem of path following and formation control for underactuated 3-degrees-of-freedom surface vessels in the presence of unknown ocean currents is considered. The proposed controllers make the vessels asymptotically constitute a desired formation that follows a given straight-line path with a desired speed profile. This control goal is achieved in the presence of currents of unknown direction and magnitude. The proposed controller consists of an adaptive yaw controller, which makes every vessel converge to its desired path, and a surge controller, which guarantees formation assembly along the path with the desired forward speed. The results are illustrated by simulations.

Path following with disturbance rejection for inhomogeneous formations with underactuated agents

“…Other works considering formation path-following of marine vehicles include [7]- [12]. In [7] coordinated path following in the presence of communication failures and time delays is considered for formations of underactuated vehicles without environmental disturbances.…”

“…Ocean current are considered in for instance [6], [10], however these works consider fully actuated marine vehicles. In [11], [12] formation control of underactuated vessels under the influence of constant disturbances is considered. Model uncertainties are also taken into account in [11], however only ultimate boundedness of the closed loop errors is achieved.…”

Formation Control of Unmanned Surface Vehicles with Sensing Constraints Using Exponential Remapping Method

“…(i) In contrast to the leader-follower formation control problems in [1][2][3][4][5][16][17][18], this paper addresses sensor constraint problems of leader-follower formation control of USVs. Unlike the agents without sensing limitations or with 360-degree sensing fields considered in [2,5,[22][23][24][25], the proposed control scheme based on backstepping control technique and exponential remapping method enables the USVs with sector-like sensing constraints to form a stable formation.…”

“…In [15], within a leader-follower framework, fully actuated ships were controlled as a formation by applying the integrator backstepping and cascade theory. In [16], the problem of path following and formation control for underactuated surface vessels in the presence of unknown ocean currents was considered, and the proposed controllers were based on line-of-sight (LOS) guidance, adaptive control, and cascaded systems 2 Mathematical Problems in Engineering theory. In [4], formation control of multiple underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) was concerned, where a virtual vehicle was constructed such that its trajectory converged to the reference trajectory of the follower.…”

Robust cooperative path tracking control algorithm for multi-vessel

“…[23][24][25] For example, the cooperative path-following control of multi-vessel is studied against the disturbance of ocean currents in many literature works. 26,27 In this article, robust cooperative path tracking control for multi-vessel in the presence of ocean currents is studied. The designed coordination controller can guarantee not only the robustness for the external disturbances but also the operational performance and holding the desired spatial formation.…”