Distributed finite-time fault-tolerant containment control for multiple ocean bottom flying nodes

The Ocean Bottom Flying Node (OBFN) is a kind of small Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) used in detection of seabed resources. Based on directed commination topology, this paper investigates the problem of distributed finite-time fault-tolerant containment control for multiple OBFN systems in presence of model uncertainties, external disturbances, and thruster faults. By choosing the nonsingular fast terminal sliding surface and defining the containment error variables, a distributed finite-time containment control method is designed, so as to make the states of the multiple OBFN systems converge to the sliding surface in finite time. The thruster faults, model uncertainties, and external disturbances are considered together and estimated by utilizing Neural Networks (NNs). An adaptive law is designed to compensate the upper bounds of estimation error. Based on the graph theory and matrix theory, it is demonstrated that the follower OBFNs could enter the convex hull formed by the leader OBFNs in finite time through using the Lyapunov approach. Numerical simulation is presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.