Robust Distributed Cooperative Rendezvous Control for Heterogeneous Marine Vehicles Using Model Predictive Control

This paper investigates the cooperative rendezvous problem for intelligent surface-underwater heterogeneous marine systems and proposes a robust distributed model predictive rendezvous control scheme. The input limitations, inter-vehicle safety constraint, and external disturbances are considered simultaneously. Each vehicle can transmit and receive state information through a communication network and implement the rendezvous protocol in a parallel way. To suppress the deviation caused by disturbances, a nonlinear tube-based model predictive control (MPC) is designed, which integrates the nominal optimal action and the anti-disturbance feedback into a compound form. By constructing rendezvous safety and auxiliary constraints, collision-free rendezvous can be achieved under disturbances. Comprehensive theoretical analyses, including closed-loop stability and recursive feasibility, are provided. Simulation and comparisons are conducted to verify the proposed method.