Intermittent Event-Triggered Control for Multi-AUV System with Obstacle Avoidance

This paper investigates the collaborative obstacle avoidance control of multiple autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) in underwater environments with communication delays and intermittent connectivity. Firstly, a novel time-delay piecewise differential inequality incorporating an exponential decay term is established, which systematically integrates state delay, intermittent control strategies, and event-triggered mechanisms. Secondly, the traditional request-response mechanism is replaced by a broadcast communication protocol, significantly reducing the requirement for continuous inter-AUV communication and enhancing overall communication efficiency. Thirdly, the obstacle avoidance problem of multiple AUVs is addressed through the implementation of a nominal-optimized controller. Obstacle avoidance safety conditions between unmanned vehicles and obstacles are derived by employing a zeroing control barrier function (CBF). Based on these safety conditions and input constraints, a quadratic programming (QP) framework is formulated to dynamically optimize control signals in real time, thereby ensuring the safe operation of the multi-AUV system. Finally, the efficacy of the proposed control method is validated through comprehensive simulation results, demonstrating its robustness and practical performance.