Distributed Tracking Control for Connectivity-Preserving and Collision-Avoiding Formation Tracking of Underactuated Surface Vessels with Input Saturation

This paper investigates the formation tracking control problem of a group of underactuated surface vessels (USVs) in the presence of model uncertainties and environmental disturbances. Additional constraints, such as collision avoidance, heterogeneous limited communication range and input saturation are also considered. A modified barrier Lyapunov function (BLF) is introduced to achieve the connectivity preservation, the collision avoidance and the distributed formation tracking. Extended state observer (ESO) is employed to estimate total disturbances consisting of environmental disturbances and model uncertainties. Auxiliary variables are introduced to deal with the underactuated problem and input saturation. A distributed controller is developed for each USV. Using the Lyapunov method analyze the stability of the system, it is proven that all signals are bounded and tracking errors converge to a neighborhood of the origin. Simulation results show that the proposed controller is practicable and effective. View Full-Text