Two-layer affine formation maneuvering control of multi-hovercraft with connectivity maintenance and collision avoidance

The dynamic affine formation control problem of underactuated hovercraft under the conditions of connectivity maintenance and collision avoidance is addressed in this paper, aiming to establish an affine formation maneuvering control strategy subject to safe distance constraints. Affine formation control method has advantages in solving target formation motion constraints in arbitrary dimensional space, but flexible formation transformation increases the security risk of collision and communication link disconnection. This paper proposes a novel two-layer compound affine control strategy to achieve a configuration that maintenances collinearity and ratios of distances with target configuration while avoiding the potential collision and communication link disconnection risks between adjacent nodes. Firstly, the signed Laplacian matrix is constructed based on the stress balance relationship, and the affine localizability of the target configuration is obtained under specific graphical conditions. On this basis, a connectivity maintenance and collision avoidance strategy based on finite-order partial derivative continuous potential function is proposed. Then the corresponding two-layer compound affine control law is constructed to achieve collision avoidance and connectivity preservation. Finally, numerical simulations verify the effectiveness of the theoretical results.