Adaptive Cooperative Formation Control of Autonomous Surface Vessels With Interception of Moving Objects

This paper investigates the leader-follower formation control problem of autonomous surface vessels (ASVs) where malicious attack occurs. This problem consists of two subtasks. The first is to steer the agents to form a desired geometric pattern and the second is to intercept the moving objects, namely the oncoming attacker with a new formation. Based on graph theories and backstepping, a leader-follower approach is designed to solve the formation control problem and a switching strategy is designed to make the ASV switch between formation mode and interception mode. To improve the robustness against model uncertainties and environmental disturbances, an adaptive law is designed. It is shown that the desired formation control is obtained and the interception of moving objects is also realized within a reasonable error. Simulations are performed to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.