Passive Formation and Containment Control of Multiple Nonlinear Autonomous Ship Systems with External Disturbances Based on Interval Type-2 T–S Fuzzy Model

A formation and containment control problem is discussed for the Nonlinear Multi-Autonomous Ship Systems (NM-ASSs) with uncertainties and disturbances based on the Interval Type-2 (IT-2) Takagi-Sugeno Fuzzy Model (T-SFM) in this paper. A different formation control scheme is provided by using the state feedback controller of leader ships. Because of this feature, information communication between leader ships, which are farthest from each other in formation and containment problems, isn’t required. However, the analysis problem in the IT-2 fuzzy containment controller design method is caused by the leader’s formation controller. A design concept for the unknown leader’s input of linear multi-agent systems is successfully extended to solve the problem by the expression of IT-2 T-SFM. Nevertheless, the analysis process will become conservative while the agent number or fuzzy rule number is increased. Thus, a relaxed analysis method is also considered for the containment controller design. Additionally, the passive performance constraint is combined into the IT-2 fuzzy formation controller design method to dissipate the disturbance effect and improve the control performance. Finally, two examples are provided to illustrate the advantage of the proposed IT-2 fuzzy controller design method in the formation and containment control problem of NM-ASSs.