Distributed secure formation control for autonomous surface vessels by performance adjustable event‐triggered mechanism

Abstract This article studies the secure formation control problem for autonomous surface vessels (ASVs) with directed event‐triggered communication subject to denial‐of‐service (DoS) attacks. DoS attack is a type of cyber‐attacks meant to cut down a network, thus causing legitimate neighbors to lose their expected communication in the control mechanism. A distributed secure formation control algorithm (DSFCA) is proposed to mitigate the negative impact of DoS attacks. Specifically, a model‐based dynamic event‐triggered mechanism (DETM) with positive minimum inter‐event times (MIET) is developed to save communication resources. Wherein, a clock‐like dynamic is chosen to guarantee the non‐Zeno behavior and provide a positive MIET guarantee. Simultaneously, a model‐based state estimator (MBSE) is designed in DETM to reduce the effect of the error caused by DETM during the triggering interval. Furthermore, the effects of DoS attacks on the formation control systems are analyzed. Some sufficient conditions are derived, in which the upper bounds of attack duration rate and attack frequency are given. Finally, numerical simulations are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.