Current Regulatory Issues in the Usage of Autonomous Surface Vehicles

Autonomous Surface Vehicles (ASVs) are becoming increasingly popular for a large number of applications from oceanography to border protection and shipping. In particular, the advent of long-term ASVs allows for months-long missions such as the round globe trips made by Wave Gliders. This introduces both opportunities and challenges. While long-term ASVs can be very useful, for instance, in monitoring applications, legal and safety challenges arise with their increased presence in the seas. Few initiatives are pushing for specific regulations in Civil Law for Robotics. One of them has been taken by the European Parliament. In this article, we present the European Parliament proposed guidelines, identify the most prominent regulatory issues of ASVs in a specific use case and discuss the feasibility of applying these guidelines and other alternatives to regulate the use of ASVs.