Adaptive leader-follower formation control of autonomous marine vehicles

This paper addresses the problem of adaptive leader-follower formation control (ALFC) of autonomous marine vehicles. The rationale for this study can be found in a number of challenging geotechnical surveying missions aimed at mapping geological structures under the seabed. Mission specifications require that a group of surface vehicles equipped with acoustic receivers (hydrophones) maneuver in formation and acquire acoustic data emitted by one or more vehicles that carry acoustic emitters. To this effect, we adopt a basic set-up for ALFC previously proposed for mobile robots modeled as single integrators and extend it to include explicitly the full dynamic equations of a representative type of marine vehicles. The paper offers a formal proof of convergence of the resulting formation control system. Results of simulations illustrate the performance that can be obtained with the control law proposed.