Precision Fixed-Time Formation Control for Multi-AUV Systems with Full State Constraints

• Published in: Mathematics (Basel) Vol. 13; no. 9; p. 1451
• Main Authors: Chen, Yuanfeng, Wang, Haoyuan, Wang, Xiaodong
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.05.2025
• Subjects: autonomous underwater vehicle; Autonomous underwater vehicles; Communication; Constraints; Control systems; Control theory; Design; Disturbances; event-triggering mechanism; fixed-time control; formation control; full-state constraints; Inequality; Laws, regulations and rules; Liapunov functions; Neural networks; Remote submersibles; State observers; Underwater robots; Velocity
• ISSN: 2227-7390; 2227-7390
• DOI: 10.3390/math13091451

The trajectory tracking the control of autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) systems faces considerable challenges due to strong inter-axis coupling and complex time-varying external disturbances. This paper proposes a novel fixed-time control scheme incorporating a switching threshold-based event-driven strategy to address critical issues in multi-AUV formation control, including full-state constraints, unmeasurable states, model uncertainties, limited communication resources, and unknown time-varying disturbances. A rapid and stable dimensional augmented state observer (RSDASO) was first developed to achieve fixed-time convergence in estimating aggregated disturbances and unmeasurable states. Subsequently, a logarithmic barrier Lyapunov function was constructed to derive a fixed-time control law that guarantees bounded system errors within a predefined interval while strictly confining all states to specified constraints. The introduction of a switching threshold event-triggering mechanism (ETM) significantly reduced communication resource consumption. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in improving control accuracy while substantially lowering communication overhead.