Advanced Formation Control for Under-actuated Autonomous Underwater Vehicles with Uncertain Dynamics

In this paper, a formation control scheme is developed for under-actuated autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) regarding to uncertain dynamics. Specifically, virtual targets are generated based on the leader's position and given formation. Constant bearing guidance law is then utilized to calculate the desired velocities to guide the followers to precisely track these virtual targets. Based on back-stepping technique, a formation controller is designed and two disturbance observers are constructed to deal with uncertain dynamics. It guarantees that the formation errors between vehicles are uniformly ultimately bounded through Lyapunov-based stability analysis. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is verified through numerical simulation for numerous under-actuated AUV vehicles.