Abstract: In actual maritime operations, a vessel usually needs to coordinate with multiple vessels and perform coordination operations according to different task requirements. Considering the communication requirements of multiple vessels and the cooperative formations with different operation modes, this paper proposes a task-driven cooperative formation control method under directed communication topology. By separately designing the controllers of formation, coordinated positioning, and coordinated tracking, as well as the smooth transition controller among the above controllers, the proposed method can make the vessel activate the corresponding coordination controller according to different tasks and ensure a smooth transition among the controllers in the meantime such that the task-driven cooperative formation control is finally realized. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated by simulation results.