Formation Control of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Subject to Communication Delays

This paper addresses the formation control problem for fleets of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). The solution is based on the virtual leader approach, with the main goal of designing a control system to cope with the inter-vehicle communication problems, especially significant in underwater environments. The use of kinematic relations allows the linearization of the AUV dynamics maintaining its turning capacities. The control strategy consists of a feedback H₂/H_∞ controller in combination with a feedforward controller, which makes it possible to deal with delays and packets dropouts while ensuring a good formation control performance.