There has been a growing interest in the use of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) for a variety of missions. The defence community, being the major stakeholder, has uses of this technology in strategic tasks, including mines clearing, surveillance and coastguard patrolling. Conversely, the civilian sector employs USVs in missions such as environmental surveying and mapping, measuring the extent of an oil spill and locating the source of a chemical discharge. Although the navigation, guidance and control systems of those vehicles have reached some level of maturity, they cannot be classed as fully autonomous due to the lack of an automatic obstacle detection and avoidance (ODA) system. Moreover, the USVs, in civilian operations in particular, need to abide by some kind of 'rules of the road' to navigate safely along with the ambient marine traffic. These rules are defined by the International Maritime Organisation and are called the COLREGs.
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