Author(s)

Jinyeong Heo¹, Junghoon Kim², Yongjin Kwon^1*

¹Department of Industrial Engineering, Ajou University, Suwon, South Korea.
²The 6th R&D Institute, Agency for Defense Development, Jinhae, South Korea.

In recent years, because of the development of marine military science technology, there is a growing interest in the unmanned systems throughout the world. Also, the demand of Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) which can be autonomously operated without the operator intervention is increasing dramatically. The growing interests lie in the facts that those USVs can be manufactured at much lower costs, and can be operated without the human fatigue, while can be sent to the hostile or quite dangerous areas that are inherently unhealthy for human operators. The utilization and the deployment of such vessels will continue to grow in the future. In this paper, along with the technological development of unmanned surface vehicles, we investigate and analyze the cases of already developed platforms and identify the trends of the technological advances. Additionally, we suggest the future directions of development.

Maritime Military System, Unmanned System, USV (Unmanned Surface Vehicle), USV Operation Function, Autonomous Control

Heo, J. , Kim, J. and Kwon, Y. (2017) Analysis of Design Directions for Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs). Journal of Computer and Communications, 5, 92-100. doi: 10.4236/jcc.2017.57010.