Abstract: ObjectivesAiming at the problem that the system state perception and transmission ability are limited during the formation movement of multiple autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV), a distributed robust model predictive formation control method based on event driven measurement communication joint framework is proposed. Methods>By combining the formation communication topology network and system state, an event triggering mechanism based on state observation is established. The mechanism uses the relative measurement information between AUVs to effectively avoid the communication delay and data loss caused by the failure of underwater acoustic broadcasting communication, so as to improve the observability of the system without location information interaction. On this basis, a distributed formation predictive controller based on Lyapunov theory is proposed, and the contraction constraint is constructed by using the backstepping control law to ensure the feasibility and closed-loop stability of the predictive controller in the iterative process. ResultsTheoretical analysis and simulation results show that this method can effectively improve the stability and tracking accuracy of AUV formation under the condition of limited system state perception and transmission ability.ConclusionsThe proposed method has good feasibility and effectiveness, and has practical engineering significance.