A leader-follower formation control approach for target hunting by multiple autonomous underwater vehicle in three-dimensional underwater environments

As one of the challenging tasks of multiple autonomous underwater vehicles systems, the realization of target hunting is the great significance. The multiple autonomous underwater vehicle target hunting is studied in this article. In some research, because the hunting members cannot reach the hunting point at the same time, the hunting time is long or the target escapes. To improve the efficiency of the target hunting, the leader-follower formation algorithm is introduced. Firstly, the task is assigned based on the distance between the autonomous underwater vehicle and the target. Then, the autonomous underwater vehicles with the same task are formed based on leader-follower mode, and the formation is kept to track the target. In the final capture phase, multiple autonomous underwater vehicle system use angle matching algorithm to round up target. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively accomplish the target hunting task, save the hunting time, and avoid the target escape. Compared with the bioinspired neural network algorithm, the proposed algorithm shows better performance.