Coordinated path-following and attitude control for multiple surface vessels via curve extension method

This paper addresses the problem of coordinated path-following and attitude control design for a group of fully actuated surface vessels on given convex loops. By incorporating the curve extension design with the consensus-based design we propose a solution to the formation and attitude coordination control. It removes the assumption of nonzero total speed of each vessel that is presented in the literature. With the help of invariance-like theorem and the extension of Barbalat´s lemma, it is proved that the designed cooperative control system is asymptotically stable if the bidirectional commutation topology is connected. An simulation example is presented as a proof of concept.