Time-Synchronized Formation Control of Unmanned Surface Vehicles

Time-synchronization (TS) formation control for unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) presents several advantages, including precise execution of tasks, broadened combat capabilities, and improved information fusion quality. To achieve this performance, a time-synchronized formation control method is presented that takes into account direct topology, external disturbances, and system uncertainties (EDSU). In contrast to prior formation control strategies, we introduce the formalized time-synchronized formation control framework, where all state components of the formation system concurrently converge to the equilibrium point at a uniform time constant, independently of their initial states. To counteract the EDSU, a fixed-time disturbance observer is designed to guarantee the convergence of all observer error components to zero. System stability is corroborated through the application of Lyapunov-like theory. Simulations and comparative experiments on three USVs are conducted to demonstrate the proposed method's superiority.