Velocity free platoon formation control for unmanned surface vehicles with output constraints and model uncertainties

This paper studies the velocity free platoon formation control for unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) with the model uncertainties and output constraints. Firstly, a reconstruction module is designed to estimate the velocity of the leader, which will be completed in finite time and will reduce the communication burden. Along with this, the model-based control combined with the symmetric barrier Lyapunov functions (BLF) method is designed to guarantee the output constraints. Then, the model uncertainties of the USV are approximated by the neural networks (NNs) and the NN BLF control is developed. To achieve the desired formation pattern, the constraints, including collision avoidance and communication distance, are under consideration. Finally, we proved that our system is semiglobally uniformly ultimately bounded (SGUUB) and verified the effectiveness of this approach by simulations.