Distributed coordinated control of multiple underactuated marine surface vehicles along one curve

This paper investigates the coordination problem for multiple underacutated marine surface vehicles (MSVs) along one curve. The dedicated control designs are categorized into two envelopes. One is to steer individual underactuated MSV to track the given spatial path, and the other is to force the vehicles dispersed on a parameterized path. With these two tasks formulation, a coordinated path following controller is developed based on a line-of-sight guidance law and a new path variable containment design approach. Specifically, the vehicle coordination is achieved by adapting the speed of the vehicles, such that the path variables of the vehicles are uniformly dispersed between those of two virtual leaders. The path following control subsystem and the coordination control subsystem form a cascade system, which is shown to be uniform global asymptotic stable. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the new coordination method.