Fixed-Time Leader-Follower Formation Control of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles With Event-Triggered Intermittent Communications

This paper investigates a fixed-time leader-following formation control method for a set of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) with event-triggered acoustic communications. First, an event-triggering communication strategy is developed to govern the communications between leader AUV and follower AUVs. Then, using a fixed-time control theory and a Lyapunov functional method, a compensator-based command filtered formation control algorithm is proposed, with which the follower AUVs can track the leader AUV in a given fixed time. Namely, the control method can guarantee all the signals in the formation control system to be globally fixed-time stabilized. With the presented fixed-time control scheme, the predesignated AUVs formation can be achieved within a fixed settling time under arbitrary initial system states, which is otherwise impossible under any existing methods including finite-time control. Furthermore, the compensator-based command filtered control technique makes the designed formation control law simple and easy to implement in practice. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the method.