A Control Strategy for Unmanned Surface Vehicles Flocking

Decentralized control allows each unmanned surface vehicle (USV) in a flock to be autonomous to some extent. In this paper, the flocking algorithm put forth by Olfati-Saber was improved and applied in the multi-leader scenario based on its original flocking movement. Repulsion was also taken into account in the formation. Subsequently, the concept of neighborhood in finite-range communications was borrowed to control the communication distance of each USV. In this way, USVs could satisfy the restriction of a given communication distance, and avoid collision in motion. USVs might have collaborative tracking of a virtual leader and obtain the distributed cooperative control strategy. Based on the simulation results, the improved flocking control algorithm allowed every USV to accurately track the speed of the virtual leader they followed, respectively. The test results also demonstrated the effectiveness of the algorithm in safe flock navigation, and proved that the proposed control algorithm must be an effective way to ensure the safe flocking of multiple USVs.