Formation control of unmanned underwater vehicles using local sensing means in absence of follower position information

Abstract

Formation control is one of the essential problems in multi-unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) coordination. In this article, a practically oriented UUV formation control structure and method are proposed for the problem of large communication in leader–follower approach. To solve the problem of large communication in multi-UUVs, local sensing means of acoustic positioning is used to provide the real relative distance and angle information for the follower UUV. So, only a small amount of state information of the leader UUV needs to be sent to the follower UUV by acoustic communication. Then, the formation control structure in absence of follower position information is proposed. In this control structure, only the relative distance and angle, as well as velocity and heading of the leader UUV, are used for the formation controller design of the follower UUV. Backstepping and Lyapunov methods are used to design the formation controller without position information of the follower UUV. Two formation configurations of rectangle and triangle with five UUVs are simulated to verify the effectiveness of the method proposed. The simulation results show that the follower UUV can successfully constitute and maintain the desired formation by controlling each real relative distance and angle.