Maritime autonomous surface ships (MASS) may operate in three predefined operational modes (OM): manual, remote, or autonomous control. Determining the appropriate OM for MASS is important for operators and competent authorities that monitor and regulate maritime traffic in given areas. However, a science-based approach to this respect is currently unavailable. To assist the selection of the proper OM, this study presents a risk-based...

Although the safety of prospective Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships will largely depend on their ability to detect potential hazards and react to them, the contemporary scientific literature lacks the analysis of how to achieve this. This could be achieved through an application of leading safety indicators. The aim of the performed study was to identify the research directions of leading safety indicators in three safety-critical...

While a system‐theoretic approach to the safety analysis of innovative socio‐technical systems gains a growing acceptance among academia, safety issues of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) remain largely unexplored. Therefore, we applied a System‐Theoretic Process Analysis to develop and analyze a preliminary model of the unmanned shipping system in order to elaborate safety recommendations for...

This paper proposes a hybrid robust-adaptive learning-based control scheme based on Approximate Dynamic Programming (ADP) for the tracking control of autonomous ship maneuvering. We adopt a Time-Delay Control (TDC) approach, which is known as a simple, practical, model free and roughly robust strategy, combined with an Actor-Critic Approximate Dynamic Programming (ACADP) algorithm as an adaptive part in the proposed hybrid control...