A Hybrid Approach for Coordinated Formation Control of Multiple Surface Vessels

This paper investigates the coordination control of multiple marine vessels in different operational modes. Based on hybrid control theory, a novel coordinated formation control approach is proposed. The proposed method comprises several continuous state controllers and discrete event logics. Continuous controllers for coordinated formation, coordinated dynamic positioning and coordinated path following are designed, and an appropriate weighting function is given to switch between these controllers according to initiated commands. In order to ensure the security of coordination operations of vessels in arbitrary initial locations, the supervisory switching control method is employed in the integrated coordination control system where all the controllers are governed by a supervisor. The effectiveness of the proposed coordinated formation control approach is finally illustrated by simulations.