Adaptive AUV formation strategy under acoustic communication conditions

The formation of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) has been increasingly researched with tremendous amount of potential applications, e.g., environment monitoring or surveillance, self-localization and mapping, as well as security patrol. However, acoustic modem is almost the only instrument up to now can effectively work for multi-AUV communications, which is a big limitation in comparing with wireless communication. This study has analyzed and established directed graphical model for AUVs interaction via time-delayed communication links. Furthermore, a contention-based and collision free scheme has been developed for the data link layer in order to reduce the amount of data in communication. A multiregion formation for AUVs has been defined in which with the leader be located at centre, followers and obstacles at different regions away from the centre. An adaptive formation controller using multi-region control concept has been designed within a time-delayed acoustic communication network. Simulations for AUVs formation under acoustic communication conditions have been extensively performed to demonstrate and verify the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.