Formation Control of Multiple Underactuated Surface Vehicles Based on Prescribed-Time Method

This paper investigates the formation control problem of multiple underactuated surface vehicles (USVs). By utilizing input and state transformations, the dynamic model of the USV is converted into an equivalent system consisting of two cascade-connected subsystems. For one of the subsystems, by combining back-stepping method with time-varying scale functions, C-1 smooth prescribed-time control laws are presented. This approach is proved to stabilize the transformed subsystem in the fixed time and address the formation problem while guaranteeing global exponential stabilization. Simulations are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the presented method.