Coordinated control for multi-AUV systems based on hybrid automata

This paper presents a coordinated control strategy based on hierarchical control architecture for a team of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs). The dedicated control structure is described by a four layered design for coordinated control, constituted with a global organizer and a local organizer modeled by a discrete-event system as two upper layers, an AUV controller modeled by a continuous-time system as a lower layer, and an AUV interpreter interconnecting the upper and lower layers as a middle interface. Such that the layered design for the coordination strategy is encoded as hybrid automata based techniques. As triggered by special events, the team organizer intermittently generates waypoints, then that the AUV controller generates commands which continuously move the AUVs between waypoints. Therefore, the team constituted even with heterogenous AUVs could implement a coordinated control as a whole using the proposed strategy. Simulation examples of AUVs in a flock demonstrate the results.