Distributed formation control of autonomous underwater vehicles with impulsive information exchanges and disturbances under fixed and switching topologies

In this paper, the distributed formation problem of multiple autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) with impulsive information exchanges and disturbances is investigated. In the studied case, all the information exchanges among the AUVs are completed according to the admissible impulse time sequence, which is more practical in the weak underwater communication environment. By model transformation, sufficient conditions are derived to ensure that the desired formation of multiple AUVs can be achieved under both fixed and switching communication topologies. Finally, a numerical example is presented to verify the effectiveness of the theoretical results.