Safety-Preserving Lyapunov-Based Model Predictive Rendezvous Control for Heterogeneous Marine Vehicles Subject to...

Area of Science:

• Robotics
• Control Systems
• Marine Engineering

Background:

• Cooperative control of heterogeneous marine systems (autonomous underwater vehicle - AUV, autonomous surface vehicle - ASV) is challenging due to external disturbances and input limitations.
• Ensuring safe and precise rendezvous requires advanced control strategies that can handle system uncertainties and constraints.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a Lyapunov-based model predictive control (LMPC) framework for cooperative rendezvous of perturbed AUVs and ASVs.
• To address state constraints and external disturbances simultaneously in highly nonlinear marine systems.

Main Methods:

• Incorporation of prescribed performance control (PPC) into the LMPC framework to transform state constraints.
• Design of PPC-aided auxiliary control laws using disturbance observers (DOBs) for robust contractive constraints.
• Development of a safety-preserving LMPC (SP-LMPC) controller by solving the MPC problem for an equivalent unconstrained system.

Main Results:

• The proposed LMPC-PPC framework effectively transforms the state-constrained problem into an unconstrained one, preserving rendezvous safety.
• The SP-LMPC controller inherits robustness and stability from auxiliary control laws, ensuring reliable performance under disturbances.
• Theoretical analyses confirm the recursive feasibility and closed-loop stability of the developed control strategy.

Conclusions:

• The novel LMPC-PPC framework offers a robust and stable solution for cooperative rendezvous in perturbed heterogeneous marine systems.
• This approach provides a new paradigm for simultaneously managing state constraints and external disturbances in complex marine robotics applications.
• Simulations and comparisons validate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed safety-preserving LMPC algorithm.