Formation tracking and attitude synchronization control of underactuated ships along closed orbits

Summary This article considers the problem of directing a family of underactuated ships to formation tracking a set of closed orbits and achieve attitude synchronization. It shows that our previous concentric compression design can be extended to deal with a general kind of non‐convex, closed curves and the coordinated motion of underactuated ships. The condition of nonzero total linear speed of each ship is ensured by a potential function. Under the bidirectional communication topology, asymptotical stabilization is proved with the help of the invariance‐like theorem and the extension of Barbalat's lemma. Theoretical results are proved by the numerical examples.