Containment Control with Group Control Strategy for Multi-USV Systems in Narrow Waterways

This paper proposes a time-varying grouping containment control strategy for multi-unmanned surface vehicle (USV) systems navigating through narrow waterways with mid-channel obstacles. First, a virtual-leader-based grouping mechanism is developed to decompose the original global containment hull into multiple time-varying sub-convex hulls, enabling different follower subgroups to pass through separated navigable regions. Subsequently, a local algebraic-connectivity-based topology reconfiguration strategy is introduced within each subgroup to regulate follower-to-follower coupling while preserving subgroup connectivity. Moreover, a fuzzy adaptive compensator is incorporated into the distributed containment control protocol to compensate for matched unknown hydrodynamic nonlinearities and environmental disturbances. A Lyapunov-based analysis demonstrates that the containment errors and adaptive parameters are uniformly ultimately bounded under admissible local topology switching and bounded virtual-leader motion. Finally, numerical simulations with four actual leaders and six followers indicate that, in the considered scenario, the proposed method maintains positive obstacle clearance, regulates local algebraic connectivity, and improves the robustness of grouping containment control.