Location Game of Multiple Unmanned Surface Vessels with Quantized Communications

A placement problem of multiple unmanned surface vessels (USVs) is investigated from a game perspective in this brief. The group of USVs is required to form a desired formation shape, while each USV has its individual objective of being at a particular place relative to the static reference target according to its own benefit. Note that the individual goals of USVs may conflict with the global formation goal of the group. In this context, the location game of multiple USVs is formulated, and a gamed-based controller is designed for each USV to drive it to the equilibrium position that balances the formation goal and the individual goal. Moreover, considering practical limited communication bandwidth, the transmitted information of the USVs is quantized through a uniform quantizer. It is proved that there exists a unique Nash equilibrium of the location game of multiple USVs and the designed controller can drive the USV systems with quantized communication to a small neighborhood of the Nash equilibrium.