Unmanned Surface Vehicle

Also known as USV

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Overview

This field studies how unmanned boats perceive waterways, plan safe routes, control their motion, and carry out tasks such as seabed surveys, environmental monitoring, search, and rescue. Common approaches combine cameras, sonar, GPS, and inertial sensors with mapping and sensor-fusion methods, while model-predictive control, convex optimization, and reinforcement learning guide navigation and coordination. Researchers evaluate systems in simulators and on real vessels, including tests of collision rules, bathymetric coverage, disturbance recovery, and operation in constrained or GNSS-denied waterways. A central challenge is making methods reliable across changing weather, water conditions, and sensor failures, while ensuring that simulated performance translates to safe real-world operation.

Latest papers

CardsList

21 papers5 papers in the last four weeks, up 67% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. Reinforcement Learning Based Heterogeneous Task Allocation Under Spatio-Temporal Environmental Uncertainty for Multi-Robot Teams

    Oct 11, 2026Xi Lin, Yaxuan Li, Paul Szenher +1Multi-Robot Task AllocationDecentralized MARL

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology, 1 Castle Point Terrace, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA

  2. An Autonomous, 3D Printed, Waterjet-Powered, Open-Source Robotic Trimaran for Environmental Inspection and Monitoring

    Oct 5, 2026Reuben O'Brien, Martin Lambrechtse-Reid, Minas LiarokapisRobotic InspectionUnmanned Surface Vehicle

    New Dexterity Research Group, Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, The University of Auckland, New Zealand

  3. AeroBuoy: A Drone Deployable, 3D Printed, Autonomous Robotic Buoy for Environmental Inspection in Remote and Hazardous River Systems

    Oct 5, 2026Reuben O'Brien, Angus Lynch, Minas LiarokapisRobotic InspectionRobotic Data Collection

    New Dexterity Research Group, Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, The University of Auckland, New Zealand

  4. Reliability-aware short-term roll prediction for unmanned surface vehicles via multi-task learning and adaptive centralization

    Oct 1, 2026Kaizhen Li, Xi Zhou, Zihao Wang +3Uncertainty QuantificationUnmanned Surface Vehicle

    School of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, China · Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Shanghai, 200032, China · Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, China

  5. Benchmarking EMlog Calibration for Autonomous Surface Vehicles

    Sep 30, 2026Samuel Cohen-Salmon, Itzik KleinModel CalibrationRobot State Estimation

    The Hatter Department of Marine Technologies Charney School of Marine Sciences, University of Haifa Haifa, Israel

  6. Constraint-Unified MPC for Over-Actuated Surface Vehicles with Post-Detection Fault Reconfiguration

    Sep 17, 2026Sebastian Burmester, Ruiheng Jiang, Noa Sendlhofer +2Unmanned Surface VehicleRobot Trajectory Tracking

    Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control (IDSC), ETH Zürich, Switzerland

  7. HydroMap: Probabilistic Water Surface Elevation Mapping for Semantic Scene Representation in Inland Waterways

    Sep 14, 2026Zhongbi Luo, Yunjia Wang, Herman Bruyninckx +1Semantic MappingUnmanned Surface Vehicle

    Division of Robotics, Automation and Mechatronics, Department of Mechanical Engineering, KU Leuven, 3001 Leuven, Belgium · Division of Declarative Languages and Artificial Intelligence (DTAI), Department of Computer Science, KU Leuven, 8200 Bruges, Belgium · Department of Mechanical Engineering, TU Eindhoven, 5612 AZ Eindhoven, The Netherlands

  8. EcoBoat: Design and Experimental Validation of an Autonomous Body-Board Boat For Cleaning Water Bodies

    Sep 13, 2026M. Aman Ansari, Saifullah Khan, Rahul Kulkarni +1Unmanned Surface Vehicle

    Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Bhopal, India

  9. Dynamical System-Based Imitation Learning and Neuroadaptive Control for Trajectory Recovery in Autonomous Ships

    Aug 25, 2026Yeyson A. Becerra-Mora, José Ángel AcostaDisturbance RejectionRobot Trajectory Tracking

    Dept. Ingenieria de Sistemas y Automatica, University of Seville, Sevilla, 41092, Spain · Dept. of Electronic Engineering, CUN, Bogota, 111711, Colombia

  10. OGR-MARL: Option-Guided Residual Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Heterogeneous USV Cooperative Pursuit in Constrained Port Waterways

    Aug 13, 2026Jiayang Mao, Lanfeng Wang, Zhao-Han PengReinforcement LearningMobile Robotics

  11. Design and Control of the "QuadBoat": A Quadruped Surface Vehicle for Drowning Rescue

    Jul 15, 2026Lianxin Zhang, Yihan Huang, Huihuan QianMobile RoboticsRobotics

    Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Society (AIRS), Shenzhen, 518129, Guangdong, China. · School of Science and Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen (CUHK-Shenzhen), Shenzhen, 518172, Guangdong, China. · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, 07030, New Jersey, United States.

  12. AUSLUN: A Fixed-Hover UAV--USV System for GNSS-Denied Maritime Search and Navigation

    Jun 29, 2026Siyuan Yang, Zikai Jia, Hailiang Kuang +4Robot NavigationGNSS-Denied Localization

    School of Aerospace Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China · Khalifa University Center for Autonomous Robotic Systems (KUCARS), Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi 127788, United Arab Emirates

  13. Efficient Time-Domain Simulation of USV Motions in Short-Crested Irregular Waves Using an IRF-Based Framework

    Jun 23, 2026Fei Duan, Zihao Wang, Yaohua Zhou +1Unmanned Surface Vehicle

    State Key Laboratory of Ocean Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China · Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, China · Rules & Technology Center of China Classification Society, Shanghai 200240, China +1

  14. Traceable Virtual Sea Trials in the Marine Robotics Unity Simulator for Manoeuvring Assessment of Unmanned Surface Vehicles

    Jun 10, 2026Paria RezayanRobotics SimulationMobile Robotics

    School of Engineering and Built Environment, Sheffield Hallam University, UK

  15. MPPI-based Informative Trajectory Planning for Search and Capture of Drifting Targets with ASVs

    Jun 10, 2026Sanjeev Ramkumar Sudha, Marija Popović, Erlend M. CoatesInformative Path PlanningUnmanned Surface Vehicle

    Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway · TU Delft, The Netherlands

  16. Cooperative Circumnavigation for Multiple Unmanned Surface Vehicles Without External Localization

    Jun 3, 2026Xueming Liu, Lin Li, Xiang Zhou +2Multi-Robot Formation ControlMulti-Robot Coordination

    School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Sun Yat-sen University (Shenzhen Campus), Shenzhen, China

  17. Multi-Depth Uniform Coverage Path Planning for Unmanned Surface Vehicle Surveying

    May 13, 2026Maider Larrazabal, Tong Yang, Izaro Goienetxea +1Mobile RoboticsCoverage Path Planning

    AZTI Foundation, Bizkaia, Spain. · Dept. of Comp. Sc. and Artificial Intelligence, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Donostia-San Sebasti´an, Spain. · Dept. of Comp. Sc. and Technology, Tsinghua University, P.R. China. +1

  18. Sonar-GPS Fusion for Seabed Mapping in Turbid Shallow Waters with an Autonomous Surface Vehicle

    May 3, 2026Yisheng Zhang, Michael Xu, Alan Williams +3Underwater RoboticsMultimodal Sensor Fusion

    University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA · University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Cambridge, MD 21613, USA · Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA

  19. Variable-Resolution Virtual Maps for Autonomous Exploration with Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs)

    Mar 24, 2026Ye Li, Yewei Huang, Yongchang Xie +4Simultaneous Localization and MappingMobile Robotics

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, University College London, London, UK · Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ, USA · Department of Computer Science, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA

  20. COLREGs Compliant Collision Avoidance and Grounding Prevention for Autonomous Marine Navigation

    Mar 3, 2026Mayur S. Patil, Nataraj Sudharsan, Veneela Ammula +5Collision AvoidanceConstrained Motion Planning

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, USA · American Bureau of Shipping, Spring, TX, USA

  21. WaterVideoQA: ASV-Centric Perception and Rule-Compliant Reasoning via Multi-Modal Agents

    Feb 26, 2026Runwei Guan, Shaofeng Liang, Ningwei Ouyang +9Video QAVideo Reasoning

    Thrust of Artificial Intelligence, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), Guangzhou, China. · Hubei Key Laboratory of Inland Shipping Technology (Wuhan University of Technology), Wuhan, China · School of Advanced Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China. +5