Leader–follower formation control of underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles

This paper is concerned with the leader–follower formation control of multiple underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). In the proposed leader–follower control, the follower tracks a reference trajectory based on the leader position and predetermined formation without the need for leader's velocity and dynamics. This is desirable in marine robotics due to weak underwater communication and low bandwidth. A virtual vehicle is constructed such that its trajectory converges to the reference trajectory of the follower. Position tracking control is designed for the follower to track the virtual vehicle using Lyapunov and backstepping synthesis. Approximation-based control technique is employed to handle the model parametric uncertainties and unknown disturbances for the follower. The residual error between vehicles within the formation is proven to converge to a bounded compact set and control performance is guaranteed by suitably choosing the design parameters. Extensive simulations are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approaches presented.