Improved Artificial Potential-Based Formation Control of Multi-USV Systems for Collision and Obstacle Avoidance Under GPS Attacks

This paper proposes a formation control method for multi-Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV) systems with collision avoidance and obstacle avoidance under GPS attacks. Each USV is subject to unknown kinetics induced by internal model uncertainty, input saturation, and external disturbances. First, the external environmental disturbance and nonlinear dynamics of the multi-USV systems are handled using the fuzzy logic system. Second, a protocol for the formation control of multi-USV systems under GPS attacks is designed. The collision avoidance and obstacle avoidance issues are addressed by an improved artificial potential field (APF) method. Based on the Lyapunov theory, the stability of the closed-loop multi-USV systems can be guaranteed. Finally, simulation examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control method.