Adaptive region tracking control for multi-ships coordination

This paper presents a design of decentralized cooperative controller that forces a group of ships with limited sensing ranges to track a common moving target region. In this control concept, the desired objective is specified as a moving region instead of a stationary point, region or a path, and hence the region tracking control concept is also a generalization of setpoint, path following, or region reaching control problem. The controllers guarantee connectivity preserving of the dynamic interaction network, and no collisions happen between any ships in the group. The tracking control design is based on the artificial potential functions, recursive design technique and Lyapunov's method. Moreover, the problem of parametric uncertainties is handled by adaptive control techniques. Simulation results are represented to illustrate the performance of the proposed approach.