Containment control for multiple underactuated surface vessels systems

In this paper, we investigate the formation control problems and the containment control problems for the multiple underactuated surface vessels. To deal with the coupling of unactuated and actuated states, we adopt a state transformation method to convert the nonlinear system into a linear one. We propose the expression of the leader vessels' formation controller and the followers' containment controller. Besides, two theorems are given to prove the stability of the closed loop system. Then, input transformation is used to get the actual controller for the system. Finally, we give a simulation example, and the results show the effectiveness of our theories.