Adaptive dynamic surface control for cooperative path following of underactuated marine surface vehicles via low frequency learning

This paper addresses the cooperative path following problem of multiple underactuated marine surface vehicles subject to dynamical uncertainties and ocean disturbances. The control design falls neatly into two parts. One is to steer individual marine surface vehicle to track a predefined path; and the other is to synchronize the along-path speed and path variables under the constraints of an underlying communication network. The key features of the developed controllers are that, first, the proposed dynamic surface control technique simplifies the controller design by introducing the first-order filters and avoids the calculation of derivatives of virtual control signals; second, the developed controllers with filtering adaptive laws allow for fast adaptation using large adaptive gains without generating high-frequency oscillations in control signals. Rigorous theoretical analysis demonstrate that all signals in the closed-loop system are uniformly ultimately bounded. Simulation results are provided to show the efficacy of the proposed method.