Article
Formation Control of a Multi-Autonomous Underwater Vehicle
Event-Triggered Mechanism Based on the Hungarian Algorithm
Juan Li , Yanxin Zhang and Wenbo Li *
Citation: Li, J.; Zhang, Y.; Li, W.
Formation Control of a
Multi-Autonomous Underwater
Vehicle Event-Triggered Mechanism
Based on the Hungarian Algorithm.
Machines 2021, 9, 346. https://
doi.org/10.3390/machines9120346
Academic Editors: Yuansong Qiao
and Seamus Gordon
Received: 8 November 2021
Accepted: 6 December 2021
Published: 9 December 2021
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4.0/).
School of Intelligent Science and Engineering, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin 150009, China;
lijuan041@hrbeu.edu.cn (J.L.); zhanyanxin@hrbeu.edu.cn (Y.Z.)
* Correspondence: liwenbo049@hrbeu.edu.cn
Abstract:
Among the key technologies of Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) leader–follower
formations control, formation reconfiguration technology is one of the main technologies to ensure
that multiple AUVs successfully complete their tasks in a complex operating environment. The
biggest drawback of the leader–follower formations technology is the failure of the leader and the
excessive communication pressure of the leader. Aiming at the problem of leader failure in multi-
AUV leader–follower formations, the Hungarian algorithm is used to reconstruct the failed formation
with a minimum cost, and the improvement of the Hungarian algorithm can solve the problem of a
non-standard assignment. In order to solve the problem of an increased leader communication task
after formation reconfiguration, the application of an event-triggered mechanism (ETM) can reduce
unnecessary and useless communication, while the efficiency of the ETM can be improved through
increasing the event-triggered conditions of the sampling error threshold. The simulation results of
multi-AUV formation control show that the Hungarian algorithm proposed in this paper can deal
with the leader failure in the multi-AUV leader–follower formation, and the ETM designed in this
paper can reduce about 90% of the communication traffic of the formation which also proves the
highly efficient performance of the improved ETM in the paper.
Keywords:
autonomous underwater vehicle; hungarian algorithm; formation reconfiguration;
event-triggered mechanism
1. Introduction
At present, the technology of AUVs has been gradually maturing. The technology
becomes outstanding in marine equipment combined with sensors, intelligent control tech-
nology, and communication technology, which is widely used in civil and military activities.
Additionally, it is the main tool for performing tasks such as marine resource exploration,
port reconnaissance, underwater demining, and laying pipelines on the seabed [
1
]. With
the rapid development of information technology, the operation environment of AUVs
will become more complex and difficult in the future. A single AUV often cannot complete
complicated tasks due to its limited resources and bad system fault tolerance. The coordi-
nated formation operation of a multi-AUV can make up for the limited operation capacity
of a single AUV. Therefore, it is bound to become a trend to use large-scale, low-cost and
multi-functional AUVs to form clusters to complete formation operations in the future.
The form of the leader–follower is a kind of formation. The basic idea is to select an
AUV as the leader in the formation, with the other AUVs as followers. The advantage of
this is that the control structure is simple and precise formation control can be realized.
The leader is the core part of the formation and when the AUV formation performs tasks,
the followers need to communicate with the leader constantly to confirm the position of
the leader and to maintain the formation. The failure of the leader refers to the fact that the
leader cannot continue sailing or communicating with the follower due to damage, causing
the entire formation to become paralyzed. Therefore, the leader–follower formation can
have problems such as leader failure and leader communication pressure.
Machines 2021, 9, 346. https://doi.org/10.3390/machines9120346 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/machines
