Formation Control of Unmanned Surface Vehicles with Sensing Constraints Using Exponential Remapping Method

This paper presents a formation control strategy for unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) with sensing constraints moving in a leader-follower formation. Each USV is assumed to be equipped with a vision-based sensor, which is able to get the line-of-sight (LOS) range and bearing information. Most existing literature assumes that the USVs in formation control are with no sensing limitations or with 360-degree sensing fields; however, in our research, the vision-based sensor’s capability is restricted due to limited Field of View (FOV) and visual range. We consider that each USV in formation problem is equipped with a sector-like sensing field sensor for the leader-follower formation in two-dimensional space. The formation controller is developed by employing backstepping control technique and exponential remapping. The backstepping controller is designed to stabilize the triangular formation of three USVs, and the proposed exponential remapping method is to deal with the sector-like sensing constraint problem. Comparative analysis with three exponential remapping methods using numerical simulations is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.