Cooperative path-following in a moving path reference framework for autonomous marine vehicles

This paper focuses on the improvement of a virtual target based path-following guidance system for the execution of coordinated manoeuvres within a multi-vehicle framework, with the chance of defining moving reference paths. The analysis of a Lyapunov-based guidance algorithm is carried out keeping into account the presence of a reference path's velocity vector, proving the convergence of the control system. Furthermore the overall architecture to achieve the motion coordination of a set of robotic platform is reported. Experimental results, obtained from a development and test campaign, are also reported in order to validate the proposed approaches. © 2013 IEEE.