Coordinated path following for multiple underactuated AUVs

This paper addresses the problem of coordinated path following whereby multiple underactuated marine crafts are required to follow a prescribed paths while keeping a desired inter-vehicle formation pattern. We show how Lyapunov- based techniques and graph theory can be brought together to yield a decentralized control structure where the dynamics of the cooperating vehicles and the constraints imposed by the topology of the inter-vehicle communications network are explicitly taken into account. Path following for each vehicle consists of converging the geometric error at the origin. Vehicle coordination is achieved by adjusting the speed of each vehicle along its path according to information on the positions and speeds of a subset of the other vehicles of the group. We illustrate our design procedure for three underwater marine craft. Simulations results are presented and discussed.