Robust anti-perturbation safety control of multi-heterogeneous unmanned vessels

The identical nature of unmanned vessels in a homogeneous formation imposes limitations on their adaptability to diverse task demands in complex environmental conditions or constantly evolving task requirements, hindering their ability to achieve optimal performance. This paper presents the heterogeneous formation comprising fully actuated and underactuated vessels to overcome these limitations. Firstly, an affine transformation is employed to implement arbitrary configuration transformations within the formation system. Secondly, a composite learning formation controller is proposed for the underactuated vessels acting as the leaders to track the arbitrary formation transformation. Thirdly, considering that certain followers have access to the state information of the leaders, a new virtual leader-follower structure is constructed to achieve formation maneuver control by designing distributed estimators to estimate the state information of the virtual leader. Finally, simulation results validate the proposed control law's effectiveness.