Obstacle Avoidance of Surface Agent Formation Based on Streamline Traction at Fixed-Time

The marine environment is highly complex and variable, featuring obstacles such as islands, buoys, and vessels. Safe navigation of the surface agent (SA) fleet is crucial for ensuring the safety of the SA fleet, enhancing operational efficiency, and guaranteeing the smooth execution of the fleet’s mission. Regarding the problem of formation obstacle avoidance for SA fleets encountering complex obstacles during navigation, this chapter presents a fixed-time-based safe navigation algorithm for the SA fleet based on streamline traction. Firstly, to precisely position each SA at the designated location within the formation, a highly malleable leader–follower formation mode is introduced. Based on an enhanced interfered fluid dynamical system (EIFDS) obstacle avoidance algorithm, the virtual Leader is guided to evade static obstacles and determine a trajectory of the designated position. Secondly, a first-order fixed-time control Lyapunov function (FTCLF) is designed based on the EIFDS obstacle avoidance algorithm to guide the angular velocity constraint. The optimal guiding angular velocity signal is obtained through quadratic programming, ensuring that the SA steers towards the designated position while avoiding obstacles. Next, for the guiding velocity amplitude signal, a first-order fixed-time control barrier function (FTCBF) is designed based on the streamline formation scheme and the inter-boat safety distance to guide the velocity amplitude constraint. The optimal guiding velocity amplitude signal is obtained through quadratic programming, guaranteeing that each SA maintains the formation while avoiding collisions with adjacent vessels. Finally, the simulation results indicate the effectiveness, superiority, and stability of the proposed fixed-time-based safe navigation guidance algorithm for the SA fleet based on streamline traction.