Improved leader follower formation control of autonomous underwater vehicles using state estimation

Multi robot coordination and control for underwater robots is an area of significant importance in many underwater missions. A new approach for leader follower formation control of multi AUV systems is explored in this paper. The controller estimates the next desired position of the follower robot from the past and current positions of the leader and follower robots. The control signals are then issued to the follower robot to align it to the estimated trajectory. This control scheme has the capability to compensate for initial errors and follow the leader under various operational scenarios. The development of the controller and simulation results for selected scenarios are presented. The results show that the proposed method is simple and computationally efficient.