Adaptive sliding mode formation control of multiple underwater robots

This paper proposes a new adaptive sliding mode control scheme for achieving coordinated motion control of a group of autonomous underwater vehicles with variable added mass. The control law considers the communication constraints in the acoustic medium. A common reference frame for velocity is assigned to a virtual leader dynamically. The performances of the proposed adaptive SMC were compared with that of a passivity based controller. To save the time and traveling distance for reaching the FRP by the follower AUVs, a sliding mode controller is proposed in this paper that drives the state trajectory of the AUV into a switching surface in the state space. It is observed from the obtained results that the proposed SMC provides improved performance in terms of accurately tracking the desired trajectory within less time compared to the passivity based controller. A communication consensus is designed ensuring the transfer of information among the AUVs so that they move collectively as a group. The stability of the overall closed-loop systems are analysed using Lyapunov theory and simulation results confirmed the robustness and efficiency of proposed controller.