Safety-Critical Distributed Containment Maneuvering of Underactuated Autonomous Surface Vehicles via Local LiDAR Perception

Ensuring collision-free navigation is essential for the safe operation of multiple autonomous surface vehicles. This paper addresses the problem of safe containment maneuvering of multiple underactuated ASVs in unknown environments. A distributed containment maneuvering controller based on local LiDAR perception is proposed, which allows the ASVs to move into the convex hull formed by multiple virtual leaders following parameterized paths, achieving coordinated formations while maintaining collision-free behavior. First, the containment maneuvering control law is developed based on the information of the neighbor information. Then, by introducing path parameter deviations among multiple virtual leaders, a path parameter update law is designed. Finally, obstacle information is obtained through LiDAR perception, and a Gaussian process is employed to construct a control barrier function-based safety constraint. The designed containment maneuvering control law is optimized via quadratic programming to ensure real-time safety. Lyapunov stability analysis demonstrates that the overall control system is asymptotically stable, ensuring the safety of the system. The simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed approach.