Spatio-Temporal-Consistency Target-Guided Coordinate Control of Unmanned Surface Vehicles Based on Strong Prescribed-Time Stability

This paper investigates a nonlinear strong prescribed-time cooperative-control theory, aiming to achieve spatio-temporal consistency in multi-agent control under disturbance. Taking multiple unmanned surface vessels (USVs) as the application object, a strong prescribed-time cooperative target-guided coordinate control (SPT-TACC) method is proposed to ensure that USVs can complete the cooperative target-tracking task at the prescribed time. First, the error models of the cooperative kinematic subsystem and the kinetic subsystem are converted into periodic delayed forms, and a strong prescribed-time cooperative-control system based on periodic delayed feedback is designed, enabling each USV to arrive at the desired tracking point simultaneously at the prescribed time. Second, a complete stability proof is provided for the nonlinear strong prescribed-time cooperative-control theory with physical constraints. Finally, an empirical formula for the lower bound of the prescribed convergence time of the system with physical constraints is summarized, and the rules for setting the prescribed convergence time of each subsystem are summarized to avoid the divergence problem of the control system caused by unreasonable settings of multiple prescribed times. Simulation comparison results effectively verify the effectiveness of the proposed control method.