STRAIGHT LINE PATH FOLLOWING FOR FORMATIONS OF UNDERACTUATED SURFACE VESSELS

The problem of formation control and path following for underactuated 3-degrees-of-freedom (DOF) surface vessels is considered. The proposed decentralized controller makes the vessels asymptotically constitute a desired formation that follows a given straight line path with a given forward speed profile. The controller consists of a Line-of-Sight guidance law and a coordination control law. In this work simplifying assumptions from previous works on this subject are avoided and a complete stability analysis is provided. The results are illustrated with simulations.