Coordinated control of multiple unmanned surface vehicles: recent advances and future trends

The future trends of marine operations will be intelligent, networked and swarmed marine vehicles. One of the main trends of future marine operations will be joint operations through the coordination of multiple unmanned surface vehicles (USVs). As an introduction to the mathematical model of USVs, this paper presents the key problems and fundamental challenges of motion controlling multiple USVs. Regarding different mission scenarios of USVs, the existing results will be classified into trajectory-guided, path-guided, and target-guided coordinated control. In conclusion, we discussed and summarized the future trends of the coordinated control of multiple USVs.