Formation Tracking Control of Multiple Marine Surface Vehicles Over a Directed Network: A Cooperative Dynamic Surface Control Design

Abstract Unlike the traditional tracking control of single marine vehicle, this paper considers the formation tracking control of multiple marine surface vehicles over a directed network in the presence of unknown dynamics, all seeking to maintain a formation relative to a time-varying trajectory. A cooperative dynamic surface control design approach is proposed to devise the formation tracking controllers, where nonlinearly-parameterized neural networks are used to compensate for the model uncertainties. It is proved that with the developed controllers, formation among vehicles can be reached if the trajectory has directed paths to all follower vehicles. Based on Lyapunov stability analysis, all signals in the closed-loop system are guaranteed to be uniformly ultimately bounded, and formation tracking errors converge to a small neighborhood of the origin. Simulation results are given to show the efficacy of the proposed method.