Cluster synchronization of multiple <scp>AUV</scp> systems with tan‐type <scp>Barrier Lyapunov Function</scp> and Integral Quadratic Constraints through distributed finite‐time error constraint adaptive pinning control strategy

Abstract The remarkable performance of the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) makes it a valuable tool for exploring resources and conducting marine scientific research. Under the directed communication topology, the paper addresses the problem of distributed finite‐time error constrained adaptive cluster synchronization for heterogeneous multi‐AUV systems. To achieve cluster synchronization in multi‐AUV systems, certain AUVs are selected as pinning nodes, and a novel distributed finite‐time adaptive pinning control algorithm with adaptive pinning gains is proposed. A tan‐type barrier Lyapunov function (BLF) is employed to constrain the position and orientation errors. In addition, the integral quadratic constraints (IQCs) are employed to characterize nonlinear model uncertainties, and an adaptive strategy is designed to estimate the model uncertainties. Then, external ocean disturbances are estimated by a neural network (NN) adaptive mechanism. It is proved that position and orientation errors converge to a small neighborhood of zero in finite time. Finally, to validate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy, simulation and comparative studies are conducted.