Development of a Vision-Based Situational Awareness Capability for Unmanned Surface Vessels

Using unmanned surface vessels (USVs) for “dull, dirty and dangerous missions” is gaining traction in recent years as it removes the human element from a potentially life-threatening environment in missions such as mine hunting or maritime interdiction. Current USVs rely on human operators sitting in remote control stations to monitor the vessels’ surroundings and perform collision detection and avoidance. This reliance on the human operator constrains the operating envelope of the USV as it requires a high bandwidth and low latency communication link for safe operations, especially in waters with heavy traffic.