Research on Formation Rendezvous for Unmanned Surface Vehicles Considering Arbitrary Initial Positions and Headings

The formation of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) stands as a paramount concern in USV formation control research. In addressing this, this paper introduces a novel formation strategy for USVs, which accounts for their arbitrary initial positions and headings. Firstly, given the random distribution of the USVs’ initial positions, to enhance the efficiency of formation assembly, the point set of the USVs is matched with basic formations using the Hausdorff distance to establish the formation. Building upon this foundation and acknowledging the potential hindrance posed by the arbitrary initial headings of the USVs, which could hinder their ability to reach the designated formation target points, a cost matrix is constructed based on the designed distance–azimuth evaluation function. Subsequently, the Hungarian algorithm is utilized to efficiently assign formation target points for the USVs. Ultimately, the effectiveness of the proposed strategy is validated through simulation experiments.