The invention discloses an unmanned ship formation control method based on an
active vision piloting-following method. The method comprises the following steps: constructing an unmanned ship
kinematics model based on a geodetic coordinate
system; establishing a cradle head
monocular camera model for a cradle head camera carried on the unmanned ship; defining a
servo tracking error for the piloting-following method unmanned ship formation
system by combining the unmanned ship
kinematics model and the holder
monocular camera model; defining an image coordinate error based on the
view angle constraint of the cradle head
monocular camera; designing an unmanned ship
motion controller and an adaptive parameter updating law through a Lyapunov synthesis method; and designing a pan-tilt camera steering controller and a self-adaptive parameter updating law through a Lyapunov comprehensive method. According to the method, a
servo tracking error and an image coordinate error are defined, the two errors are introduced into a Lyapunov synthesis method to design an unmanned ship
motion controller and a pan-tilt camera steering controller, and an adaptive parameter updating law is adopted, so that the smooth operation of visual
servo control of the unmanned ship is ensured.