Advanced Research in Sustainable and Intelligent Navigation Control Systems for Marine Vehicles

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, autonomous vehicles have been increasingly used in a wide array of applications due to their great adaptability and the availability of several systems capable of accomplishing complex targets such as collision avoidance, track-keeping, target tracking, auto-berthing, and path planning. However, these systems have not yet been adequately integrated into the maritime field. It is hypothesized that the introduction of smart technologies onboard and the possible adoption of new ship designs for these vehicles will have a potential positive impact on the energy efficiency process, thereby further improving safety and relieving humans of repetitive tasks that can lead to high accounts of error. Unfortunately, the feasibility of integrating such large-scale systems into the main bridge control interface as decision support or command advice, and the advantages associated with energy preservation, is not yet clear.

Therefore, this Special Issue of the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering (JMSE) titled ‘Development of Sustainable and Intelligent Navigation Control Systems for Marine Vehicles’ invites submissions of original research articles and reviews that underscore the novelties in the methodologies of developing integrated and collaborative navigation systems, highlight the impact of these systems on energy consumption and energy efficiency, as well as state the associated challenges.

Potential topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Ship, autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs), unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), and underwater gliders;
• Swarms of unmanned vehicles, multiple vehicle mission control and planning, and cooperative surface and underwater vehicles;
• Guidance, navigation and path planning;
• Kinematics and vehicle dynamics;
• Sensor and actuator systems;
• Power system operation;
• Vehicle model tests, applications, case studies, field trials, and experimental results for propulsion system;
• Control, modeling, simulation and optimization of propulsion system;
• Path following, path planning, trajectory planning, and automatic collision avoidance;
• Applications of artificial intelligent (AI)/machine learning (ML) in autonomous marine networks;
• Machine learning methods for marine robotics;
• Intelligent and adaptive control architectures;
• Cooperative control and navigation in multi-unmanned systems;
• Fault diagnosis and fault tolerance;
• Automation system and energy integration;
• Docking and charging stations;
• Propulsion system;
• Thruster allocation;
• Software and hardware-in-the-loop simulation.

We look forward to receiving your valuable submissions.

Dr. Silvia Donnarumma
Dr. Mai The Vu
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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-anonymized 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 semimonthly 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 2600 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.