Path-Guided Cooperative Circumnavigation of Autonomous Vehicles With Collision Avoidance: An Input-to-State Safety-Certified Solution

This paper investigates path-guided cooperative circumnavigation control for autonomous vehicles with collision avoidance. Compared to the trajectory-guided control frameworks, which require vehicles to track time-dependent trajectories, the proposed method eliminates temporal constraints but introduces new design challenges. Coordination error variables based on separation angles and path information are defined, and a temporally unconstrained guidance law incorporating linear and angular velocities is proposed. The developed guidance law is inspired by chase-and-wait strategies, achieving structural simplicity. To address collision avoidance involving both inter-vehicle interactions and external obstacles for autonomous vehicles under model uncertainties and environmental disturbances, an input-to-state safe control barrier function (ISSf-CBF) is employed. The constructed ISSf-CBF systematically maps state-space safety constraints to control input constraints, thereby ensuring collision-free operations in dynamic environments. The key to achieving robust collision-free path-guided circumnavigation lies in synthesizing an input-to-state safety-certified controller by defining ISSf-CBF constraints. Simulation results verify the validity and effectiveness of the theoretical results.