Formation Control of Multiple Underactuated AUVs

This paper presents a stable formation control scheme for multiple autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) where the number of independent actuators for each vehicle are less than that of degree of freedom (DOF) of the vehicle´s motion. In many of the formation schemes presented so far, the multiple dynamic agents were usually modeled as particles whose motions can be expressed as simple second-order linear equations. Therefore, the formation algorithms could not be directly applied to the most of actual systems, typically to the multiple underwater vehicle systems whose dynamics are highly nonlinear. Moreover, the AUVs considered in this paper are torpedo types where only surge force and rudder angle are available for their horizontal motions. For these kinds of multiple underwater vehicles, proposed control scheme can guarantee the stability of the formation and further guarantee that the vehicles asymptotically move with the same velocities and headings. Numerical simulations are carried out to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed formation scheme.