Three-dimensional formation–containment control of underactuated AUVs with heterogeneous uncertain dynamics and system constraints

This paper investigates the formation–containment (FC) control problem of networked underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) in three-dimensional space. The multi-AUV system under consideration has directed topology, heterogeneous uncertain dynamics and system constraints. To achieve the leaders’ formation and followers’ containment, a two-layer control framework is adopted to decouple the FC problem into two subproblems: reference trajectory generation and trajectory tracking. In the upper layer, a distributed estimator is designed for each AUV to generate a reference trajectory in accordance with the FC objective. Subsequently, a model-free trajectory tracking strategy is developed in the lower layer, where adaptive neural networks combined with an auxiliary compensator are involved not only to approximate the heterogeneous system dynamics, but also to preserve the velocity and input constraints simultaneously. Input-to-state stability is employed to analyze the asymptotic stability of the closed-loop system. Finally, comparative simulations are carried out to illustrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed two-layer control protocol.