Autonomous Ships: Control Systems and Intelligent Navigation
A special issue of Journal of Marine Science and Engineering (ISSN 2077-1312). This special issue belongs to the section "Ocean Engineering".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 1 September 2026 | Viewed by 249
Special Issue Editors
Interests: control systems; intelligent navigation; autonomous maritime operations
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: intelligent navigation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The rapid advancement of autonomous and highly automated ships is reshaping maritime transportation, offshore operations, and marine safety. Recent progress in control theory, artificial intelligence, sensing technologies, and communication systems has enabled increasingly sophisticated levels of autonomy in complex and uncertain marine environments. Despite these advances, major challenges remain in achieving safe, robust, and reliable autonomous navigation under real operational conditions.
This Special Issue aims to provide a focused platform for high-quality research on control systems and intelligent navigation for autonomous ships, with an emphasis on both theoretical developments and practical applications. Contributions that address the integration of vessel dynamics, perception, decision-making, and control, as well as validation through simulations, experiments, or full-scale trials, are encouraged.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, guidance, navigation, and control systems for autonomous vessels; intelligent and adaptive control methods; collision avoidance and path-planning algorithms; sensor fusion and situational awareness; model-based, data-driven, and hybrid control approaches; digital twins and simulation frameworks; robustness, safety, and fault-tolerant control; human–autonomy interaction; and industrial or regulatory perspectives on maritime autonomy.
By bringing together contributions from academia and industry, this Special Issue seeks to highlight emerging trends, promote interdisciplinary collaboration, and support the transition of autonomous ship technologies from research to operational deployment.
Dr. Lúcia Moreira
Guest Editor
Dr. Lianwu Guan
Co-Guest Editor
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-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 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.
Keywords
- autonomous ships
- intelligent navigation
- marine control systems
- guidance, navigation and control (GNC)
- ship dynamics
- collision avoidance
- path planning
- sensor fusion
- situational awareness
- data-driven control
- model-based control
- hybrid control methods
- digital twins
- decision support systems
- maritime autonomy
- marine robotics
- fault-tolerant control
- safety and reliability
- experimental validation
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