Distributed model-free formation control of networked fully-actuated autonomous surface vehicles

Area of Science:

• Robotics
• Control Systems
• Marine Engineering

Background:

• Autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs) require robust control for formation tasks.
• Existing methods often necessitate precise knowledge of vehicle dynamics, limiting applicability.
• Cooperative control in ASV formations faces challenges due to unknown system parameters and external disturbances.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a distributed guidance and control strategy for ASV formation tracking.
• To address systems with fully unknown kinetic models and external disturbances.
• To achieve cooperative behavior without prior information on vehicle dynamics.

Main Methods:

• A distributed constant bearing guidance law was designed for kinematic-level consensus.
• An adaptive extended state observer (AESO) was employed to estimate uncertainties and unknown input coefficients.
• A simplified model-free kinetic controller was designed using dynamic surface control (DSC).

Main Results:

• The closed-loop system stability was rigorously proven to be input-to-state stable (ISS).
• The proposed method enables cooperative behavior without requiring any prior kinetic information.
• Simulations demonstrated the efficacy of the integrated guidance and control strategy for ASV formations.

Conclusions:

• The developed distributed constant bearing guidance and model-free control method effectively achieves formation tracking for ASVs with unknown dynamics.
• The approach offers a robust solution for cooperative control problems in marine robotics.
• This work advances the field by enabling autonomous formations in complex, uncertain environments.