Autonomous safety control of unmanned surface vessels formation driven by prescribed performance

Aiming at the problem of high-precision cooperative tracking safety control of multiple unmanned surface vessels (USVs) in complex marine environments, a formation control framework that balances formation tracking performance, anti-interference capability, and safety is proposed. In this framework, a prescribed performance control method with monotonically adjustable prescribed performance boundaries is used to generate the desired control signals, enabling the USVs to track the desired trajectory of a virtual leader while satisfying transient and steady-state error constraints during tracking. These monotonic boundary constraints reduce overshoot in formation position tracking errors, thereby minimizing collisions among USVs in the initial stage. Then, considering model uncertainty and external environment disturbances, an integral disturbance observer is designed to achieve synchronous estimation of compound disturbances and is embedded into a backstepping control framework to construct a cooperative controller with stronger performance assurance capabilities. Finally, the control obstacle function (CBF) is used to describe the safety state set of the USVs, and the corresponding quadratic programming problem is established. The closed-form solution of the minimum intervention safety controller is derived through the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker condition. Based on the closed-form solution, an auxiliary system is constructed to realize the adaptive update of performance function. Theoretical analysis shows that the algorithm can ensure the system security under the condition of conflict between formation tracking and security, and realize formation tracking under performance constraints when there is no conflict. The simulation results demonstrate that compared with other prescribed performance function strategies, this control scheme has obvious advantages in response speed, immunity, input smoothness, and safety, and possesses good engineering application value.

• Record URL:
  • https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oceaneng.2026.128316
• Record URL:
  • http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0029801826041508
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/00298018
• Supplemental Notes:
  • © 2026 Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies. Abstract reprinted with permission of Elsevier.
• Authors:
  • Wang, Lulu
  • 0000-0002-9880-1425
  • Xu, Ao
  • Sun, Mingxiao
  • 0000-0001-6528-919X
  • Luan, Tiantian
  • 0000-0002-4525-1415
• Publication Date: 2026-11-15

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: References;
• Pagination: 128316
• Serial:
  • Ocean Engineering
  • Volume: 368
  • Issue Number: 0
  • Publisher: Pergamon
  • ISSN: 0029-8018
  • EISSN: 1873-5258
  • Serial URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00298018

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Autonomous ships; Control systems; Tracking systems; Trajectory control; Vehicle performance; Vehicle safety
• Subject Areas: Marine Transportation; Safety and Human Factors; Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 02004873
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Oct 2 2026 4:54PM