Cooperative Formation and Path Following Control of Multiple USVs Along Curved Paths

In this paper, a novel cooperative formation and path following control method for multiple underactuated unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) is proposed. First, a distributed path variable update law is constructed to achieve coordination among the vehicles. Subsequently, a surge-heading guidance law is designed for each vehicle to ensure convergence to the desired path and to compensate for sideslip. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified through numerical simulations.