Extended-Range Marine Unmanned Surface Vehicles for Border Surveillance Missions

This work focuses on the development of extended-range marine unmanned surface vehicles (USV) for border surveillance missions. USVs present many advantages for marine applications due to their energy-saving capabilities and lack of in-board pilot needs. Nevertheless, due to their small scales, USVs often present reduced mission ranges. In order to overcome this handicap, this work proposes the application of innovative energy management strategies to optimize the available energy during one mission. This solution is based on path and speed optimizations, taking into account the most probable weather and sea conditions, to define a mission plan. The proposed energy management optimization is supported by the USV simulation model. This model is calibrated and verified with two experimental tests: one in an indoor swimming pool and the other in an outdoor enclosed harbour. Applying the proposed optimization strategy results in energy savings between 10 and 35.9%, subject to the maximization of mission time. This work is carried out within the international project SEMS4USV, supported by Frontex.