Dear Colleagues,

The development of autonomous or partially autonomous underwater vehicles and systems has made many tasks that previously depended on manned vehicles or remote and indirect manual operations possible. As an important tool of ocean exploration, unmanned underwater surface vehicles and systems can be used for scientific research, such as underwater terrain recognition, seafloor mapping, and marine ecological monitoring. In addition, they also play an important role in marine resource exploration and development, underwater rescue, and military reconnaissance. Compared with fixed marine sensors, unmanned vehicles and systems with some autonomy can conduct oceanographic surveys with higher resolution and quality, which is an important development trend in marine exploration. However, in the underwater environment, the communication, positioning, tracking and navigation of underwater systems are still very challenging due to the difficulty of wireless communication and the use of the global navigation satellite system. In order to solve such problems, research on acoustic base line systems, estimation techniques and other tools to assist underwater positioning and navigation emerge in an endless stream, and also provide new ideas for reliable trajectory/path tracking and obstacle avoidance algorithms in unmanned marine vehicles.

It is our pleasure to announce the launch of a new Special Issue in Remote Sensing, whose goal is to collect research results on the application of unmanned marine vehicles and systems in marine mission monitoring, navigation and positioning, and its latest development prospects. Research topics include, but are not limited to, surface/underwater vehicles, navigation and control, underwater acoustic communication, motion planning for tracking and the path and trajectory, new advances in the cooperative navigation of multiple vehicles and systems, and the use of machine learning and intelligence in navigation and positioning.

Dr. Nak Yong Ko
Guest Editor

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• unmanned surface/underwater vehicles
• navigation/localization
• acoustic communication
• motion planning
• cooperative navigation of multiple vehicles and systems
• guidance, tracking, and control
• ocean monitoring
• sensor fusion for navigation and positioning
• machine learning and AI for marine navigation