  In this paper we addressed the cooperative transport problem for a team of
autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs) towing a single buoyant load. We consider
the dynamics of the constrained system and decompose the cooperative transport
problem into a collection of subproblems. Each subproblem consists of an ASV
and load pair where each ASV is attached to the load at the same point. Since
the system states evolve on a smooth manifold, we use the tools from
differential geometry to model the holonomic constraint arising from the
cooperative transport problem and the non-holonomic constraints arising from
the ASV dynamics. We then synthesize distributed feedback control strategies
using the proposed mathematical modeling framework to enable the team transport
the load on a desired trajectory. We experimentally validate the proposed
strategy using a team of micro ASVs.
