A Sliding Mode Based Guidance System for Vehicle-Following Operations

The purpose of this work is the development of a guidance and control system for the vehicle-following task, extendable to rigid formation maintenance, in the case of more than two vehicle within the framework. The novelty of a guidance system development based on a sliding mode control approach is described and validated by a number of experimental tests carried out with two Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) during at-sea trials, and simulative tests extended to vehicle formation control.