Adaptive containment control of multi-leader fleet of underwater vehicle-manipulator autonomous systems carrying a load

This paper addresses the problem of a fleet containment under the leader-follower strategy with direct topology. The complete fleet navigation, guidance and control have been designed using adaptive control and the artificial potential field formation-based approach. The framework is developed to control the navigation and formation of a fleet of underwater vehicle-manipulator systems (UVMs). The proposed containment control approach is a distributed cascade control structure composed of a navigation and guidance controller and a tracking controller. For the path tracking control, adaptive is applied to the general equations of motion of the underwater vehicle equipped with a 3 link manipulator owing to its ability to achieve fast and robust adaptation. Potential field like control has been used for navigation and guidance. The objective is to ensure robust formation maintenance while in motion or in a standby position. Simulation results show the performance of the control approach even when subjected to ocean disturbances.