Distributed formation control of AUVs under external disturbance and intermittent communication

This paper investigates the leader-follower formation control problem for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) in the presence of intermittent communications and external disturbances. For intermittent communication control, the time intervals of communication are made up of two parts: the normal time interval and the break time interval. During the normal communication period, the AUV will transmit its own states to its neighbors, while in the break time, there is no information interaction in the communication network. Hence, it is unknown whether the stability of the formation could be guaranteed in the presence of intermittent communication. Moreover, the existence of external disturbance will further affect the performance of the formation in a negative way. Considering these problems, a sliding mode surface constructed by a segment auxiliary variable is developed to relieve the system instability caused by the sudden change in control effectiveness during the intermittent interruption period. The first controller realized the formation mission by combining the adaptive algorithm and the proposed auxiliary system. However, the leader in the above discussion is static which is limited in practical application. Considering a dynamic leader whose velocity is not available to every follower, a distributed dynamic compensator is developed to deliver the leader’s velocity information among the followers. Finally, theoretical analysis and simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the designed formation control scheme.