Formation Control Strategy for Underactuated Unmanned Surface Vehicles Subject to Unknown Dynamics and External Disturbances with Input Saturation

• Published in: International journal of control, automation, and systems Vol. 18; no. 11; pp. 2742 - 2752
• Main Authors: Mu, Dong Dong, Wang, Guo Feng, Fan, Yun Sheng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bucheon / Seoul Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems and The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers 01.11.2020; Springer Nature B.V; 제어·로봇·시스템학회
• Subjects: Adaptive systems; Adaptive technology; Control; Control theory; Disturbances; Engineering; Learning; Mathematical models; Mechatronics; Multilayers; Neural networks; Parameters; Robotics; Robust control; Surface vehicles; Tracking control; Unmanned vehicles; Vehicles; 제어계측공학; underactuated unmanned surface vehicle; formation; leader-follower; Adaptive control
• ISSN: 1598-6446; 2005-4092
• DOI: 10.1007/s12555-019-0611-6

This paper addresses the formation tracking control problem of multiple underactuated unmanned surface vehicles. Considering many actual situations, a practical formation control scheme, which is performed by using a leader-follower approach, minimum learning parameter technique, adaptive technology and so on. Firstly, a virtual unmanned surface vehicle is designed according to the location information of the leader unmanned surface vehicle to estimate the leader’s speed information while reducing the communication bandwidth. Secondly, a formation control law is designed to make the follower underactuated unmanned surface vehicles track the leader. Unknown dynamics and external disturbances are regarded as a whole and compensated by the minimum learning parameter technique instead of multi-layer neural network and the neural shunt model can handle multiple derivation problems of virtual control laws. Meanwhile, the robustness of the controlled system is improved through adaptive technology. Besides, an auxiliary design system is employed to constrain the output range of the control law. Finally, numerical simulations are implemented to prove the feasibility of the formation tracking control strategy.