Distributed Adaptive Integral Sliding Mode Affine Formation Maneuver Control for Multiple AUVs with Event-Triggered Chattering-Reduction Mechanism

This paper proposes a distributed adaptive integral sliding mode three-dimensional affine formation maneuver control scheme for the multiple autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) formation to achieve the avoidance of the complicated underwater terrain obstacles. The three-dimensional multi-AUV formation is maneuvered (e.g., rotation, scaling, shear, coplanarity, collineation, etc.) by fusion of the affine transformation technique. The desired yaw angles of all AUVs are acquired in real time by utilizing their desired trajectories, which is with the high yaw maneuverability. Besides, the continuous adaptive sliding mode control protocol is designed to guarantee the high flexibility and formation maneuverability for the multi-AUV formation. The
$\sigma$
-modification technique is employed to design the non-monotonic adaptive sliding mode switch gain laws, which can avoid the unexpectedly large gain to reduce the chattering amplitude. Furthermore, the event-triggered mechanism is devised to transmit the control signals intermittently in the controller-thruster channels, which can further mitigate the chattering frequency and save the communication resources. The proposed distributed affine formation control scheme is with merits of high maneuverability, saving communication and chattering reduction. Finally, the high-fidelity simulations are conducted to validate the efficacy of the proposed control scheme under the real water current disturbances.