Coordinated Formation Control of Multiple Autonomous Underwater Vehicles for Pipeline Inspection

This paper addresses the control problem of inspecting underwater pipeline on the seabed, with coordinated multiple autonomous underwater vehicles in a formation. Based on the leader-follower strategy, the dedicated nonlinear path following controller is rigorously built on Lyapunov-based design, driving a fleet of vehicles onto assigned parallel paths elevated and offset from the underwater pipeline, while keeping a triangle formation to capture complete 3D images for inspection. Due to the spatial-temporal decoupling characteristics of individual path following controller, the velocities of the followers can be adapted in the coordinated control level, only relying on the information of generalized along-path length from the leader, in order to build the desired formation. Thus, the communication variable broadcast from the leader is kept to a minimum, which is feasible under the severely constraints of acoustic communication bandwidth. Simulation results illustrate the efficiency of coordinated formation controller proposed for underwater pipeline inspection.