Straight line path following for formations of underactuated underwater vehicles

In this paper we consider the problem of straight line path following for formations of underactuated underwater vehicles. The proposed decentralized controller makes the vehicles exponentially constitute a desired formation that follows a given straight line path with a given forward speed profile. This work builds on previous work [1] and [2] for 2D motion of 3DOF underactuated surface vessels and extends the ideas of [2] to 3D motion of 5DOF underactuated underwater vehicles. Motivated by [2], simplifying assumptions from previous works on this subject are avoided and a complete stability analysis is provided. Graph theory is used to model the inter-vehicle communication, and the proposed coordination controller respects the topological constraints of the communication network.