Noncooperative Game-Based Formation Control for Internet of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles With Hybrid-Dynamic Event-Driven Communications

The formation operation of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) plays a significant role in advancing the mission success of Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT). Nevertheless, potential noncooperative goals and scarce underwater acoustic communication resources pose challenges in the formation deployment of AUVs. Regarding this, this article develops a noncooperative game-based dynamic formation strategy for multiple AUVs with event-driven communications. Initially, the cost evaluation framework is established to formulate the noncooperative dynamic formation game of multiple AUVs. Then, to solve this game issue, a gradient-based distributed control algorithm is developed to steer AUVs to achieve the nash equilibrium (NE). Meanwhile, to optimize communication resource consumption and avoid impractical communication intervals, a hybrid dynamic event-driven communication mechanism (HDECM) is constructed to manage interactions among vehicles. The developed HDECM possesses two distinctive features compared to conventional approaches: 1) preformulating system-stability-ensured silent intervals; and 2) reducing redundant communications. Finally, the stability analysis and semi-physical simulations are conducted to illustrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed scheme.