Non-singular fixed-time robust containment control for autonomous surface vehicles

For the containment control problem of autonomous surface vehicles with external disturbances, a novel non-singular fixed-time control scheme is developed, where the multi-ship system consists of real leaders and followers. In contrast with traditional containment cases studied in most of the existing literature, real leaders are required to track the desired trajectories, and the followers need to get into the convex hull spanned by the real leaders in a fixed time. The method for solving the fixed-time containment control problem is divided into the following steps: Firstly, a fixed-time disturbance observer is designed to estimate the external disturbance for the leaders and the followers, and the estimation result is used to compensate for the input of the control system; Second, combined with fixed-time stability theory and a switch function, a non-singular fixed-time trajectory tracking controller for leaders is designed, such that the position tracking error could be bounded within a fixed time; Third, to achieve formation efficiently, a non-singular fixed-time containment controller strategy incorporating with graph theory is proposed for coordinating followers, such that the fixed-time stability can be ensured. Finally, simulation examples are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. •This paper addresses the containment control problem of ASVs by two layers, namely, trajectory tracking and containment formation control.•A non-singular control law is proposed for each follower to accomplish the fixed-time tracking with by the fixed-time stability theory and a switch function.•Based on fixed-time stability theory, an observer is is constructed to estimate the external disturbance, which can be achieved in fixed time.