Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships

Dear Colleagues,

Due to the increasingly strict environmental and safety regulations becoming and issues of crew safety, the maritime industry is being confronted with a range of pressing challenges. Given this, the use of autonomous ships provides potential solutions to respond to challenges, such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, fuel savings and safety. The development towards marine autonomy technology will significantly improve the situation and is expected to become a cost-efficient alternative to conventional ships. Currently, automated shipping technology is rapidly transitioning from theoretical to practical applications as the number and scope of autonomous ship prototypes increase around the globe. They are widely used in both navy and commercial applications, such as ocean observer, coast patrol, underwater monitoring and underwater production system operation, to name just a few.

The main goal of this Special Issue is to address the key challenges, thereby promoting research on maritime autonomous ships. The topics of interest in this Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Intelligent and autonomous ships;
• Autonomous maritime operations;
• Maritime control systems and applications;
• Automatic berthing and unberthing;
• Automated onboard systems;
• Shore control centre;
• Remote operations;
• Multi-objective optimization design;
• Automatic identification system (AIS);
• Situational awareness;
• Decision making and logic;
• Sea trials and ship model tests;
• Data acquisition systems and multi-sensor data fusion;
• Safety and risk assessment for autonomous ships and respective regulations;
• Machine learning methods and their application in maritime autonomous ships.

Dr. Haitong Xu
Dr. Lúcia Moreira
Prof. Dr. Xianbo Xiang
Dr. Carlos Guedes Soares
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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