Unmanned
Surface Vessel

By 2030, the use of USVs with a high degree of automation will be commonplace in various industries. The period between 2020 and 2025 will see a fast pace of technical and regulatory development, allowing the full operational use of USVs in a variety of roles before 2025, both at sea and on inland waters. In the years after 2025, USVs will find more roles and increasingly replace crewed vessels in these roles, as well as supplementing crewed vessels performing tasks which are too dangerous for ships with crew on board.

By 2030, humans will still be in the loop for supervision of these vessels, but in many cases this will be restricted to monitoring their safe operation from shore control centres, only directly intervening in case of contingencies.

In the coming years, the use of USVs will provide several important benefits to their users.

In inshore and offshore survey and inspection tasks, small USVs will progressively replace much larger crewed vessels, whose dimensions are governed by the need to safely carry and sustain the vessel crew. Without the need to safeguard the wellbeing of people on board, USVs can be employed in much harsher weather conditions, increasing the number of workable days and allowing safer use in difficult areas like surf zones and near infrastructure like windmills and platforms. For many of these operations, working with USVs will cheaper, safer and more sustainable compared to crewed vessels.

While survey and inspection applications lead the way, USVs will also increasingly find use in surveillance, search and rescue and support roles in emergency response. Here USVs will perform tasks which are too dangerous for crewed vessels to perform.

USVs will also find application in small scale city logistics, where various niches allow profitable use of autonomous USVs in garbage collection, moving building materials, cleaning canals.

USVs are more or less present since the introduction of radio-controlled toyboats decades ago. As sensor prices decreased and sensor capabilities increased, these simple platforms evolved from toys or armature usage to professional vessels with control far beyond the line of sight and professional applications. USVs are still developing technically, but technology is not the largest challenge. The key challenges for USVs are found in legislation, liability, skills and shore control.

As maritime legislation is built upon the paradigm in which a crew is present on-board, this barrier has to be eliminated in short-term. USVs do not need a crew on-board by the nature of their design , in fact many USVs do not even have room to transport persons in a safe way. More than for other smart ships, this use case demands swift change of current legislations to allow for sailing unmanned.

Sailing unmanned does not automatically mean sailing autonomous. Currently we see a human in the loop, controlling or monitoring, in all USV developments. What skillset should this operator have and what is the legal position of the operator when sailing one or more USVs from a shore control center far away or even across borders? A legal and educational framework will have to be developed in accordance with the adaptation of legislation. We also need a clear view on enforcement: how to organize inspections of the vessel, determine its owner and its operator and identification of the responsible person in case of an accident.

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