Adaptive neural sliding mode control for heterogeneous ship formation keeping considering uncertain dynamics and disturbances

This paper investigates the formation keeping problem of heterogeneous ships with underactuated inputs, uncertain dynamics, and environmental disturbances. The control objective is to make followers keep desired while tracking a leader. To solve effectively, novel virtual leader–follower scheme considering ship heterogeneity proposed by utilizing backstepping method, adaptive neural network, law. stability system proved based on Lyapunov’s direct method where all errors are guaranteed be uniformly ultimately bounded. Finally, simulations comparisons conducted verify effectiveness