Cooperative Path Tracking for Swarm of MASSs Based on Consensus Theory

At present, marine autonomous surface ships (MASSs) play a huge role in marine shipping, surveying and mapping, safeguarding the rights and interests of marine space, and other maritime tasks. The cooperative operation of a swarm of MASSs can extend the scope of operation of the MASSs, and thus allow them to carry out more complex tasks. Path tracking is an important problem for the control of a swarm of MASSs. In this paper, the control of underactuated MASSs is decoupled, to control the heading and speed, respectively. First of all, in the path tracking, the improved arc LOS guidance law is introduced, and the heading torque controller is designed, so that the MASS can track the reference path efficiently and accurately. Then the single-path guided path tracking without formation of the swarm of MASSs is studied, the reference path of the swarm center tracking is defined, and the heave thrust controller of the swarm of MASSs is designed based on consensus theory, so that the surge velocity of the MASS can tend towards consistentcy, and finally converge to the desired speed. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy is verified by two groups of simulation experiments.