Formation control of multiple marine vehicles based passivity-control design

This paper addresses the problem of coordination path following control of multiple autonomous vehicles. Stated briefly, the problem consists in steering a group of vehicles along a specified paths, while holding a desired inter-ship formation pattern. Path-following for each vehicle amounts to reducing an appropriately defined geometric error to zero. We first show a passivity property for the path following system and, next, combine this with a passivity-based synchronization algorithm to coordinate the vehicles along their paths. Vehicle coordination is achieved by adjusting the speed of each vehicle along its path according to information exchanged on the positions of a subset of the other vehicles, as determined by the communication topology adopted. Global stability and convergence of the closed-loop system are guaranteed.