Coordinated control and crash avoidance logic

Coordinated control implies the control of several independent objects to reach and follow a global goal. In this paper, the problem of coordinated path following (CPF) by a group of ships is shown. Therefore, CPF deal with the problem of controlling a group of autonomous vehicles along a desired path, while a formation is kept. In a first approach to the coordinated control, the control of a single ship to reach and follow a desired path has been studied, so that it can be extended to several ships acting in cooperation. For the control law of each ship, an element of anticipatory control has been used, which exceeds the feedback control limitation to follow curved paths. Besides crash avoidance logic has been developed and included in the control, therefore the formation can evade a possible collision.