Decentralized multi-vehicle dynamic pursuit using acoustic TDOA measurements

Multi-vehicle operations in the ocean are increasingly attractive as more vehicles become commercially available, however acoustics still defines the main practical channel for long-range wireless communication underwater. Long transmission times, scheduling delays and packet losses remain obstacles to implementing real-time multi-vehicle cooperative control for marine vehicles. We present a control system for dynamic pursuit with multiple vehicles exchanging time-difference-of-arrival (TDOA) measurements via underwater acoustic communications. Using data from field experiments conducted with autonomous surface vehicles, we show that a decentralized controller can track fast-moving targets and formation changes, leveraging partial information updates and decreased effective cycle times. As a comparison, we show results for trials conducted with one similar but centralized control scheme.