Concise leader-follower formation control of underactuated unmanned surface vehicle with output error constraints

In this paper, a concise leader-follower formation control approach is presented for a group of underactuated unmanned surface vehicle with dynamic system uncertainties and external environment disturbances, where the output errors are required to be within constraints. To settle the output error constraints, a standard barrier Lyapunov function (BLF) is incorporated into the backstepping control method. Furthermore, the “differential explosion” problem of virtual control laws is avoided by introducing the dynamic surface control. To estimate the unknown dynamic terms, an adaptive neural network is designed and a nonlinear disturbance observer is adopted to compensate for the approximation errors of neural network and ocean environment disturbances. Under the constraint of output error, the presented controller based on standard BLF has simpler structure and better control performance than depended on tan-type BLF. The presented controller can ensure that the formation errors converge to a small range around zero, while the output error constraint requirements are met. All signals in the closed-loop system are bounded, and the numerical simulation further shows the effectiveness of the presented control scheme.