Multitask Cooperative Formation Control of Autonomous Surface Vehicles With Interception of Moving Objects

In this article, we present one solution to the multitask formation and moving objects interception problem of autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs) using the graph-based approach. The investigated problem includes three subtasks, i.e., to steer agents to a desired geometric pattern, to assign the ASVs for intercepting the moving attacker and forming a new formation, respectively, and to revert to original desired formation after successful interception. A switching strategy is designed to make the ASV switch between different modes. To deal with the nonlinear dynamics of ASV and improve the robustness against model uncertainties and external disturbances, the adaptive backstepping technique is incorporated. It is shown that the group of ASVs can accomplish all the tasks with different courses of attackers. The work offers a more flexible solution for the ASV group where malicious attacker exists. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is illustrated by simulations.