Special Issue "Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships"

Dear Colleagues,

Due to the increasingly strict environmental and safety regulations becoming and issues of crew safety, the maritime industry is being confronted with a range of pressing challenges. Given this, the use of autonomous ships provides potential solutions to respond to challenges, such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, fuel savings and safety. The development towards marine autonomy technology will significantly improve the situation and is expected to become a cost-efficient alternative to conventional ships. Currently, automated shipping technology is rapidly transitioning from theoretical to practical applications as the number and scope of autonomous ship prototypes increase around the globe. They are widely used in both navy and commercial applications, such as ocean observer, coast patrol, underwater monitoring and underwater production system operation, to name just a few.

The main goal of this Special Issue is to address the key challenges, thereby promoting research on maritime autonomous ships. The topics of interest in this Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Intelligent and autonomous ships;
• Autonomous maritime operations;
• Maritime control systems and applications;
• Automatic berthing and unberthing;
• Automated onboard systems;
• Shore control centre;
• Remote operations;
• Multi-objective optimization design;
• Automatic identification system (AIS);
• Situational awareness;
• Decision making and logic;
• Sea trials and ship model tests;
• Data acquisition systems and multi-sensor data fusion;
• Safety and risk assessment for autonomous ships and respective regulations;
• Machine learning methods and their application in maritime autonomous ships.

Dr. Haitong Xu
Dr. Lúcia Moreira
Prof. Dr. Xianbo Xiang
Prof. Dr. Carlos Guedes Soares
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• intelligent and autonomous ships
• ship dynamics
• guidance, navigation and control systems
• seakeeping model
• machine learning methods
• safety and risk
• ship model tests
• captive model test
• automatic collision avoidance
• path planning
• automated onboard systems