摘要：AbstractThis paper considers the formation problem for a group of torpedo-type AUVs (autonomous underwater vehicles). For each vehicle, there are only three control inputs available for the vehicle’s 6-DOF motion in the water. So this is a typical underactuated system. For these underactuated multi-agent system, we propose a sort of virtual structure based formation scheme. Virtual structure is a graph with each node taken as virtual leader for each specific agent vehicle. And for the vehicle’s motion control, a sort of path following scheme is used to force the vehicle to follow the virtual leader’s trajectory. Proposed formation scheme can guarantee the exponential following in the spherical coordinate frame, and some of simulation studies are carried out to demonstrated this kind of following performance.
