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Formation Control Strategy for Underactuated Unmanned Surface Vehicles Subject to Unknown Dynamics and External Disturbances with Input Saturation

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Abstract

This paper addresses the formation tracking control problem of multiple underactuated unmanned surface vehicles. Considering many actual situations, a practical formation control scheme, which is performed by using a leader-follower approach, minimum learning parameter technique, adaptive technology and so on. Firstly, a virtual unmanned surface vehicle is designed according to the location information of the leader unmanned surface vehicle to estimate the leader’s speed information while reducing the communication bandwidth. Secondly, a formation control law is designed to make the follower underactuated unmanned surface vehicles track the leader. Unknown dynamics and external disturbances are regarded as a whole and compensated by the minimum learning parameter technique instead of multi-layer neural network and the neural shunt model can handle multiple derivation problems of virtual control laws. Meanwhile, the robustness of the controlled system is improved through adaptive technology. Besides, an auxiliary design system is employed to constrain the output range of the control law. Finally, numerical simulations are implemented to prove the feasibility of the formation tracking control strategy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Marine Electrical Engineering, Dalian Maritime University, No. 1 linghai road, Dalian, Liaoning, China

    Dong Dong Mu, Guo Feng Wang & Yun Sheng Fan

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  1. Dong Dong Mu
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  2. Guo Feng Wang
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Correspondence to Dong Dong Mu.

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Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Recommended by Associate Editor Augie Widyotriatmo under the direction of Editor Myo Taeg Lim.

This work was supported in part by National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 51609033, Natural Science Foundation of Liaoning Province under Grant 20180520005, the Key Development Guidance Program of Liaoning Province of China under Grant 2019JH8/10100100, the Soft Science Research Program of Dalian City of China under Grant 2019J11CY014 and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under Grant 3132019005, 3132019311.

Dong Dong Mu received his Ph.D. degree from Dalian Maritime University in 2020. He is currently a Lecturer in Dalian Maritime University. His research interests include modeling and intelligent control of unmanned surface vehicle.

Guo Feng Wang received his Ph.D. degree from Dalian Maritime University. He is currently a Professor in Dalian Maritime University, and his research interests include ship automation, advanced ship borne detection device and advanced power transmission.

Yun Sheng Fan received his Ph.D. degree from Dalian Maritime University in 2012. He is currently an Associate Professor in Dalian Maritime University, and his research interests are ship intelligent control and its application.

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Mu, D.D., Wang, G.F. & Fan, Y.S. Formation Control Strategy for Underactuated Unmanned Surface Vehicles Subject to Unknown Dynamics and External Disturbances with Input Saturation. Int. J. Control Autom. Syst. 18, 2742–2752 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-019-0611-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-019-0611-6

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