Cooperative Control for an Air-Water-Ground System With an UAV, an USV and an UGV

With the continuous progress of science and technology and the increasing complexity of the global security situation, traditional inspection methods struggle to meet the needs of modern society. Consequently, an air-water-ground inspection system that integrates multiple platforms has emerged as a research hotspot. In this paper, a cooperative air-water-ground control system consisting of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV), and an unmanned surface vessel (USV) is proposed. Sliding mode controllers (SMC) are designed to track the selected trajectories for the UGV and USV, respectively. The UAV acts as a communication relay to track the positional midpoints of the UGV and USV in real time. The UAV acts as a communication relay, tracking the positional midpoints of the UGV and USV in real time. To accurately estimate and compensate for unknown wind disturbances and ensure system robustness, an extended state observer (ESO) is introduced to estimate the state of the UAV and achieve positional disturbance rejection control using an integral terminal sliding mode controller. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed controller can achieve high-precision position control with robustness and disturbance rejection performance.