Finite-time extended state observer based collision-free leaderless formation control of multiple AUVs via event-triggered control

In terms of the non-singular terminal sliding mode control (SMC) method, this paper investigates a formation control problem for a swarm of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) with nonlinear dynamic uncertainties and environmental disturbances. Based on the leaderless consensus framework, a distributed finite-time event -triggered formation control method is proposed for AUVs by considering collision avoidance. First, a novel finite -time extended state observer (FTESO) is proposed to estimate the system uncertainties of the multiple AUV systems. Then, based on the definition of cross-coupling control, a non-singular terminal sliding surface is constructed by a collection of position cross-coupling errors. It synchronizes the relative position errors of the multi-AUVs in finite-time specified trajectory tracking during simultaneous collision avoidance ability for multi-AUVs. Finally, the event-triggered control mechanism is designed for the formation controller to save commu-nication transmission resources. Then, the derived results are validated via comparative numerical simulations.