Nonfragile Formation Control of Leaderless Unmanned Surface Vehicles With Memory Sampling Data and Packet Loss

This article, in the presence of sampling data and packet loss, is concerned with the formation regulation for a network of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) within the leaderless framework. In-neighboring USVs' information is aperiodically sampled for broadcasting over interaction channels subject to constant transmission delay. A nonfragile control protocol is novelly constructed for seeking the desired formation with tolerating controller gain fluctuation. The introduction of a continuous switching signal with two values encouragingly governs the packet loss phenomenon. With the utilization of nonsingular transformation method, algebraic graph theory and Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional technique, one proves that the desired formation is achieved if a coupling relationship can be feasibly characterized by some sufficient conditions. For the description of global formation movement, a formation reference function in the nature of an unforced dynamic system with determined initial condition is promisingly derived. A simulation example is given to validate theoretical analysis.