Bounded Containment Maneuvering Protocols for Marine Surface Vehicles With Quantized Communications and Tracking...

Area of Science:

• Marine robotics and control systems engineering.
• Autonomous navigation and coordination of multi-vehicle systems.

Background:

• Coordinated control of multiple marine surface vehicles (MSVs) presents challenges in path following and communication efficiency.
• Existing methods often struggle with finite-time error constraints and quantized information exchange.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop novel containment maneuvering protocols for multiple MSVs.
• To ensure tracking errors are constrained within finite time during path following.
• To reduce communication load through quantized information transmission.

Main Methods:

• A two-objective coordinated control framework integrating geometric and dynamic objectives.
• Development of tan-type barrier Lyapunov functions (BLFs) and finite-time guidance laws for improved geometric control.
• Implementation of a quantized control strategy with smooth saturation functions for bounded dynamic maneuvering.

Main Results:

• The proposed protocols successfully constrained tracking errors within finite time.
• Significant alleviation of communication burden among MSVs was achieved.
• Enhanced dynamic behavior and faster path updating speed were demonstrated.
• Theoretical analysis and experimental tests validated the strategy's effectiveness.

Conclusions:

• The novel containment maneuvering strategy effectively addresses path following and communication constraints for multiple MSVs.
• The integration of BLFs and quantized control offers a robust solution for coordinated marine vehicle operations.
• The findings pave the way for more efficient and reliable autonomous marine systems.