Abstract
This paper is concerned with the coverage problem with multiple autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs) in time-varying flowing environment, where the interest information distribution is unknown to the coverage networks. While taking the model parameter uncertainty into consideration, a decentralized, adaptive control law is proposed such that the coverage network will converge to the optimal assigned region from arbitrary positions. For ease of exploration, we first investigate the static coverage problem of two-agent systems in flowing environment and present an example by extending the two-agent systems into the general case. In addition, Gaussian Estimation is introduced to predict the value of the sensory function through the sampled measurements. By using the static coverage partition as theoretical foundation, we transform the optimal coverage control into the moving target tracking problems, where the target is the centroid of the assigned region for each ASV. Based on these techniques, a decentralized kinematic control algorithm is developed to navigate the multi-ASV systems. Furthermore, the adaptive back-stepping techniques are employed to extend the kinematic controller into dynamic case with uncertain model parameters. Finally, simulation studies are provided to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approaches.
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Recommended by Associate Editor Hyun Myung under the direction of Editor Hyouk Ryeol Choi. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under grants (51579210, 61472325) and the Doctorate Foundation of Northwestern Polytechnical University CX201418.
Lei Zuo is currently a Ph.D. candidate in School of Marine Science and Technology, Northwestern Polytechnical University, China. He received his B.Eng. degree form NWPU in 2011 and directly began his Ph.D. program in Control Theory and Control Application. He is interested in adaptive control, coverage control and optimization. His current research interests are focus on the coverage control for underwater vehicles in unknown environment.
Weisheng Yan is a Professor of the School of Marine Science and Technology, Northwestern Polytechnical University (NWPU), China. He received his B.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees from Northwestern Polytechnical University, China, in 1993 and 1999, respectively. His research interests include formation control of multi-agent systems, control and navigation for multiple autonomous underwater vehicles and cooperative location in ocean environment.
Rongxin Cui received the B.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees from Northwestern Polytechnical University, China, in 2003 and 2008, respectively. He worked as a research fellow at the Center for Offshore Research and Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore from 2008 to 2010. Since 2010, he has been with the School of Marine Science and Technology, NWPU, China, where he is currently a professor. His current research interests are control of nonlinear systems, cooperative path planning for multiple robots, and control and navigation for underwater vehicles and system development.
Jian Gao received the B.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees form Northwestern Polytechnical University, in 2001 and 2007, respectively. Since then, he has been with the School of Marine Science and Technology, NWPU, China, where he is currently an associate professor. His research interests include control of nonlinear systems, cooperative trajectories tracking of multiple autonomous underwater vehicles.
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Zuo, L., Yan, W., Cui, R. et al. A coverage algorithm for multiple autonomous surface vehicles in flowing environments. Int. J. Control Autom. Syst. 14, 540–548 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-014-0454-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-014-0454-0