Containment control of autonomous surface vehicles: A nonlinear disturbance observer–based dynamic surface control design

Abstract

This study presents a solution to the problem of containment control of multiple fully actuated autonomous surface vehicles subject to environmental disturbances. Using finite-time stability theory, a nonlinear disturbance observer is constructed to provide an estimation of unknown disturbances online. By employing nonlinear disturbance observer to compensate disturbances, a robust containment controller is constructed by combining backstepping technique and dynamic surface control technique. It is proved that the proposed containment control scheme can force all the followers to move into the convex hull spanned by the leaders and guarantee that all the signals in the closed-loop system are globally uniformly ultimately bounded. Finally, four simulation examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the containment controller and its robustness to external disturbances.