Human-in-the-Loop Coordinated Path Following of Marine Vehicles Based on Continuous Twisting Control

This article addresses the coordinated path-following (CPF) control under human supervision for marine vehicles (MVs) with unknown disturbances. A human-in-the-loop coordinated path-following (HCPF) control architecture is proposed based on the robust exact differentiator (RED) observer and the output feedback continuous twisting control (OFCTC) method. Specifically, a human manipulation is introduced into a virtual leader to regulate its path update speed in response to sudden circumstances for the follower MVs. All follower MVs synchronize indirectly with the human-in-the-loop virtual leader over a communication graph. Then, the path-following control problem is transformed into the controls of a second-order along-track error dynamic and a third-order cross-track error dynamic. By using the path-following errors only, the RED observers are developed to recover the unknown states of the error dynamics. Finally, the OFCTC laws are designed to achieve the individual path following in finite time regardless of the lumped disturbances. The stability of the closed-loop system is analyzed by employing the cascade theory. A salient feature of the proposed HCPF control architecture is that the CPF for MVs can be implemented under the supervision and intervention of human. Simulation results are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed HCPF control method.