Object Detection and Coordinated Control of Marine Robots

Dear Colleagues,

The ocean, a vast and critical frontier for economic and scientific activity, demands innovative technological solutions. The advent of autonomous marine robots—such as Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs), Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs)—has opened new paradigms for maritime security, environmental monitoring, and offshore operations. The next evolutionary step lies in enabling these robots to not only perceive their dynamic surroundings with high reliability but also collaborate seamlessly as coordinated teams. This integration of advanced perception and multi-agent control is essential for executing complex missions, such as inspection, surveillance, and object retrieval in challenging, GNSS-denied environments.

This Special Issue, “Object Detection and Coordinated Control of Marine Robots,” seeks to highlight pioneering research at this intersection. We invite contributions that address the core challenges: developing robust object identification, localization, and tracking algorithms resilient to low visibility, environmental disturbance, and sensor motion; creating intelligent coordination frameworks for heterogeneous swarms; and designing adaptive control systems that leverage machine learning and bio-inspired sensing. Topics of interest span from fundamental advances in computer vision and sensor fusion for maritime settings to applied studies on multi-robot communication, distributed decision-making, and shared autonomy. We welcome both theoretical and experimental papers that contribute to building more perceptive, collaborative, and intelligent marine robotic systems for the future.

Dr. Bo Wang
Dr. Davide Moroni
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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