Objectives This study aims to develop a formation maneuver control mechanism for multiple autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs) suffering from external and parameter uncertainties. Meanwhile, considering the limitation of resources equipped on ASVs, it is preferred to design a resource-saving formation control algorithm.

Methods Firstly, affine transformation is embedded into our control scheme, thus ASVs can achieve rotation, scaling, translation and shearing motion as a union, as well as the combination of these motions. By virtue of this operation, formation can be flexibility maneuvered in a distributed manner. Secondly, to handle with limited communication resources, an event-triggered mechanism is proposed and incorporated into our algorithm. Wherein, by evaluating the triggering condition, vehicles merely communicate with their neighbors if necessary, i.e., when the predesigned triggering condition is satisfied. Benefited from this process, inter-vehicle communication frequency can be effectively reduced and resources are utilized more effectively.

Results Stability analysis demonstrates the convergence of all closed-loop error signals to a compact set, ensuring the ultimate boundedness of the closed-loop system. Simulation results verify that the proposed algorithm enables the formation to achieve diverse geometric transformations, while the event-triggered mechanism reduces the communication frequency, resulting in an 78% saving in communication resources and energy consumption.

Conclusions The proposed algorithm enhances the flexibility of ASV formations through the use of affine transformations and reduces energy consumption by lowering the communication frequency. The research results can provide reference for the optimization design of ASVs formation.