Coordinated Path-Following Control of Multiple Auvs in The Presence of Communication Failures And Time Delays

Abstract: This paper addresses the problem of steering a group of underactuated Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) along given spatial paths, while holding a desired inter-vehicle formation pattern. We show how Lyapunov-based techniques and graph theory can be brought together to yield a decentralized control structure where the dynamics of the cooperating vehicles and the constraints imposed by the topology of the inter-vehicle communications network are explicitly taken into account. Path-following for each vehicle amounts to reducing an appropriately defined geometric error to a small neighborhood of the origin. Vehicle coordination is achieved by adjusting the speed command of each vehicle along its path according to information on the positions of a subset of the other vehicles, as determined by the communications topology adopted. Convergence and stability of the overall system are proved formally. This holds true in the presence of arbitrary bounded communication delays as well as communication failures under some mild condition on the nature of the failures. Simulations results are presented and discussed