Long Duration Coverage Control of Multiple Robotic Surface Vehicles Under Battery Energy Constraints

Dear Editor, This letter addresses long duration coverage problem of multiple robotic surface vehicles (RSVs) subject to battery energy constraints, in addition to uncertainties and disturbances. An anti-disturbance energy-aware control method is proposed for performing coverage task of RSVs. Firstly, a centroidal Voronoi tessellation (CVT) is used to optimize the partition of the given coverage area. The optimal position for each vehicle corresponds to the centroid of the Voronoi cell. Secondly, by consisting two battery energy control barrier functions, an energy-aware kinematic guidance law is designed to drive each RSV to the optimal position. Finally, an anti-disturbance fixed-time kinetic control law is designed for each RSV to track the desired speed based on the fixed-time extended state observer and nonlinear tracking differentiator. By the control method, RSVs are capable of achieving the long duration coverage within the given coverage area. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed anti-disturbance energy-aware control method for multi-RSV.