Cooperative Tracking Control of Multiple Autonomous Underwater Vehicles With Markovian Jumping Switching Topologies and Communication Delays

ABSTRACT This paper addresses the cooperative tracking control of multiple autonomous underwater vehicles (multi‐AUVs) under dynamic conditions, the cooperative tracking controllers are designed based on Markovian jumping switching topologies and mode‐dependent time‐varying communication delays. Firstly, the controllers that could achieve the position tracking of multi‐AUVs are designed based on consensus theory and proportional derivative (PD) control method. Secondly, the sufficient conditions of error asymptotic stability of multi‐AUVs are presented based on an appropriate Lyapunov‐Krasovskii functional. The allowable upper bound of communication delay could be calculated based on linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Finally, the simulation example is proposed to validate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.