Straight line path following for formations of underactuated underwater vehicles
Even Børhaug, Alexey V. Pavlov, Kristin Ytterstad Pettersen · 2007
In this paper we consider the problem of straight line path following for formations of underactuated underwater vehicles. The proposed decentralized controller makes the vehicles exponentially constitute a desired formation that follows a given straight line path with a given forward speed profile. This work builds on previous work for 2D motion of 3DOF underactuated surface vessels and extends the ideas of [2] to 3D motion of 5DOF underactuated underwater vehicles. Motivated by [2], simplifying assumptions from previous works on this subject are avoided and a complete stability analysis is provided. Graph theory is used to model the inter-vehicle communication, and the proposed coordination controller respects the topological constraints of the communication network.