With the advance of artificial intelligence technologies, increasing deployment of autonomous marine vehicles is taking place especially in the application for executing demanding tasks. This chapter provides an insight into autonomous marine vehicles with a special focus on unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) and the design of an autonomous navigation system. After providing a general review on the development of USVs in both civil and military applications, methods employed for modelling and controlling USVs are specifically introduced and discussed. Particular interest has been cast on the motion planning of USVs with a series of simulation results presented to showcase the effectiveness of the autonomous navigation system in a practical maritime environment.

Chapter Contents:

• Abstract
• 1.1 Introduction
• 1.1.1 USV prototypes and core systems
• 1.1.1.1 USVs for education and civil applications
• 1.1.1.2 USVs for military applications
• 1.1.2 The control strategies of USV
• 1.2 Mathematical modelling of autonomous marine vehicles
• 1.2.1 Kinematic motion of marine vehicle
• 1.2.2 Dynamic motion of marine vehicle
• 1.3 Intelligent path planning and control of autonomous marine vehicles
• 1.3.1 Collision risk assessment strategies
• 1.3.1.1 Collision risk assessment based upon the CPA
• 1.3.1.2 Collision risk assessment based upon ship domain
• 1.3.2 Motion planning for USV
• 1.3.2.1 The FMM
• 1.3.2.2 The FMM-based path planning algorithms
• 1.3.3 Autonomous and intelligent navigation of a USV
• 1.4 Conclusion
• References

Inspec keywords: mobile robots; marine vehicles; path planning; artificial intelligence; telerobotics; remotely operated vehicles

Other keywords: unmanned surface vehicles; autonomous navigation system; control; autonomous marine vehicles; modelling controlling USVs; artificial intelligence technologies

Subjects: Telerobotics; Spatial variables control; Mobile robots; Marine system control