Dynamic deadband intermittent event-triggered strategy for formation control of multiple unmanned surface vehicles

This paper focuses on the leaderless formation control of multiple unmanned surface vehicles (MUSVs) with external disturbances, communication interruptions, and model parametric uncertainties. Firstly, the auxiliary variables are introduced to transform MUSVs’ formation control into consensus achievement of these auxiliary variables. Then, to realize consensus of these auxiliary variables, the reference variables which can achieve the average consensus are defined based on the proposed dynamic deadband intermittent event-triggered mechanism (ETM). Superior to general dynamic ETMs, the proposed dynamic deadband ETM applies nonlinear coupled communication protocols and ensures the existence of positive minimum inter-event times (PMIET). Further, by guaranteeing the auxiliary variables superior tracking capability for the reference variables, the consensus of the auxiliary variables can be achieved. Thus, the desired formation is realized. Besides, the adaptive strategy and the radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) are utilized against external disturbances and dynamic uncertainties. Finally, through rigorous theoretical analysis and numerical simulations, the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method are effectively demonstrated.