This paper addresses the challenge of obstacle avoidance in leader-follower formation consensus control for a networked system of autonomous surface vessel (ASV) with second order dynamics. The control objective is to achieve effective obstacle avoidance by combining the leader-follower control protocol with the artificial potential field (APF) method. The leader-follower control protocol is implemented by designing a virtual leader as the reference trajectory with the desired velocity for the entire formation. Meanwhile, the APF method is utilized to treat obstacles as high potential points, generating repulsive forces around them to guide the ASV and avoid collisions. After successfully completing the obstacle avoidance task, the repulsive forces start to impact the overall formation performance. Recognizing that these forces may introduce undesired effects, they are treated as disturbances in the system. An analysis is conducted to assess the impact of these disturbances on the formation control using robust \(H_{{\infty }}\) performance. The effectiveness of the proposed leader-follower formation scheme in combination with the APF method is validated through simulation studies.