Distributed Edge-event Triggered Formation Control for Multiple Unmanned Surface Vessels with Connectivity Preservation
Yong Hao, Shuo Song, Bing Huang, Jun Li · 2022
In this paper, the distributed formation control problem for unmanned surface vessels (USVs) with sensing range and communication resource constraints is investigated. An edge-event triggered sliding mode controller is developed to achieve formation-keeping maneuver. Firstly, in order to preserve the prescribed communication connectivity, a combination of artificial potential function technique and the sliding mode surface is adopted in controller design process. Subsequently, considering the limited communication resource, the edge-event triggered control method is introduced to design triggering condition related to the information of every edge. Different from the traditional node-based event-triggered control mechanism, each member only transmits its state information to its out-neighbours asynchronously once the edge between them is triggered, such that the communication cost can be further reduced. The theoretical results exhibit that all signals in the closed-loop system are bounded. Eventually, by resorting to numerical simulations, the validity of the proposed controller is demonstrated.