<i>k-Connected</i> Hierarchical Topology Self-Organization Control for Networked Marine Surface Vehicles
Cheng Zhu, Weikai Wang, Zhen Zhang, Yuzhou Song, Bing Huang
Abstract
With the scale of networked marine surface vehicles (NMSVs) increasing, position scheduling for achieving formation connectivity becomes more challenging, particularly in large and obstacle-laden areas. However, existing works usually assume the formation is <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">connected</i> initially. Against this backdrop, we propose a <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">k-connected</i> hierarchical topology self-organization control scheme, steering NMSVs to establish a fault-tolerant collision-free network. A <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">k-connected</i> hierarchical network construction (KHNC) is developed to regulate the priorities of members. Then, a <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">k-connected</i> hierarchical topology formation algorithm (KHTFA) is presented to collision-free aggregates spatially dispersed NMSVs. Meanwhile, a hierarchy-aware performance indicator function is developed to sustain <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">k-connectivity</i> during collaborative maneuvers. By these designs, a collision-free cooperative optimal control scheme is proposed to achieve two objectives: 1) self-organized <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">k-connectivity</i> attainment in initially disconnected NMSVs and 2) collision-free formation maneuvers with sustained k-connectivity. The effectiveness of the proposed control scheme is confirmed by theoretical analysis and semi-physical simulation results.