Abstract: The fission control of autonomous underwater vehicles（AUV）presents a behavior of that a cohesive AUV swarm is split into multiple sub-swarms under external stimulus. An information coupling degree-based fission control algorithm is proposed for the fission control of swarm AUVs（SAUVs）without velocity measurements. Information coupling degree is utilized to denote the interaction intensity between AUVs, which realizes the behavior divergence of AUVs by adjusting their motion states. For the absence of velocity measurements, a distributed velocity observer is designed to estimate the velocities of AUVs in real time. By integrating the position information of the most correlated neighbor into the fission control law, the spontaneous fission behavior of AUVs can be achieved without velocity measurements. Both theoretical analysis and experimental simulation demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed fission control algorithm.

Key words: control science and technology, autonomous underwater vehicle, fission control, information coupling degree, velocity observer