Unmanned Marine Vehicles II

Dear Colleagues,

Water covers nearly 70% of the Earth’s surface, and throughout history, oceans, seas, lakes, rivers, etc., have been a fundamental source of food, energy, transport, and commerce. Notwithstanding this, due to the risky and difficult environment, more than 80% of the oceans are nowadays still unexplored and unmapped. In recent decades, the use of robotic vehicles has become increasingly widespread for helping and substitution of human operators working at sea. In particular, unmanned marine vehicles (UMVs) have allowed for the automation of many dangerous tasks that were previously carried out manually, either underwater or on the surface. In fact, UMVs are the key tools that will allow human beings to explore, operate, protect, and carry out the sustainable exploitation of oceans in the near future. However, there continues to be significant challenges in this field: Nowadays, there is a stronger and stronger need for increased autonomy to perform tasks over large spatial and temporal durations, the demand to carry out increasingly complex operations in an intelligent way, in addition to an ever-growing need for UMVs to cooperate and interact with the environment, other robots, or human beings to succeed in performing very complicated tasks.

The aim of this Special Issue of JMSE is to welcome papers that address new developments in the field of unmanned marine vehicles. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

- Unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs);

- Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs);

- Remotely operated vehicles (ROVs);

- Unmanned surface vehicles (USVs);

- Unmanned semi-submersible vehicles (USSVs);

- Unmanned ships;

- Gliders;

- Swarms of unmanned marine vehicles.

Special attention will be devoted to papers including original works which are supported by experimental results, especially by at-sea trials.

Dr. Angelo Odetti
Dr. Gabriele Bruzzone
Dr. Roberta Ferretti
Guest Editors

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