Coordinated path-following and attitude control for multiple surface vessels via curve extension method

This paper addresses the problem of coordinated path-following and attitude control design for a group of fully actuated surface vessels on given convex loops. By incorporating the curve extension design with the consensus-based design we propose a solution to the formation and attitude coordination control. It removes the assumption of nonzero total speed of each vessel that is presented in the literature. With the help of invariance-like theorem and the extension of Barbalat's lemma, it is proved that the designed cooperative control system is asymptotically stable if the bidirectional commutation topology is connected. An simulation example is presented as a proof of concept.