Adaptive Cooperative Platoon Control of Underactuated Autonomous Surface Vehicles

This article addresses the flexible adaptive cooperative formation platoon control (ACFPC) of a fleet of underactuated autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs) suffered by environmental current and wind disturbances. A nonlinear vessel following strategy is constructed considering the inertia times of the ASVs through the utilization of a generalized look-ahead method, allowing for a safer flexible desired gap among inter-ASV. A hierarchical formation tracking control framework is established, where a high-level control law is designed to attain a specified platoon formation pattern according to a flexible inter-ASV gap-tunning strategy, which can effectively prevent vessels from colliding. Meanwhile, an adaptive low-level individual regulator is developed for each ASV to govern the vehicles toward the desirable velocity calculated by the high-level controller. Sufficient conditions are derived afterward to guarantee the asymptotic stability of the closed-loop multi-ASV fleet regulated by the proposed ACFPC. Finally, real lake-based experiments are conducted to substantiate the effectiveness of the ACFPC.