Velocity-Free Formation Control and Collision Avoidance for UUVs via RBF: A High-Gain Approach

This paper designs an adaptive formation control system for unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) in the presence of unmeasurable states and environmental disturbance. To solve the problem of unmeasurable UUV states, a filtered high-gain observer (FHGO) is employed to estimate the states, despite measurement noise. Then, an adaptive control scheme is designed to achieve UUV formation collision avoidance. The radial basis function (RBF) is used to estimate the unknown disturbance. The stability of UUV formation with collision avoidance is proven by using the Lyapunov theorem. Numerical simulation is carried out to demonstrate that the proposed filtered high-gain observer is successful in estimating the states of UUVs. The control law can keep the UUV formation from collision with good performance.