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Review
. 2019 Feb 8;19(3):702.
doi: 10.3390/s19030702.

A Survey on Unmanned Surface Vehicles for Disaster Robotics: Main Challenges and Directions

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Review

A Survey on Unmanned Surface Vehicles for Disaster Robotics: Main Challenges and Directions

Vitor A M Jorge et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

Disaster robotics has become a research area in its own right, with several reported cases of successful robot deployment in actual disaster scenarios. Most of these disaster deployments use aerial, ground, or underwater robotic platforms. However, the research involving autonomous boats or Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) for Disaster Management (DM) is currently spread across several publications, with varying degrees of depth, and focusing on more than one unmanned vehicle-usually under the umbrella of Unmanned Marine Vessels (UMV). Therefore, the current importance of USVs for the DM process in its different phases is not clear. This paper presents the first comprehensive survey about the applications and roles of USVs for DM, as far as we know. This work demonstrates that there are few current deployments in disaster scenarios, with most of the research in the area focusing on the technological aspects of USV hardware and software, such as Guidance Navigation and Control, and not focusing on their actual importance for DM. Finally, to guide future research, this paper also summarizes our own contributions, the lessons learned, guidelines, and research gaps.

Keywords: ASC; USC; USV; autonomous boat; autonomous surface craft; disaster management; disaster robotics; floods; hazard; hurricanes; landslides; search and rescue; survey; tsunamis; unmanned surface craft; unmanned surface vehicle.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The DM cycle. Mitigation and Preparedness occur before the disaster indeed, while Response is immediately before and after it. Recovery always happens after the occurrence of a disaster. Note that the DM cycle tends to make affected regions better prepared when another disaster strikes.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The distribution of surveys analyzed. From those associated with DM, only one is dedicated to UMVs, but none to USVs exclusively. Please note that if we remove works exclusively focusing on USVs from the list, the number of surveys drops to zero.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Visual representation for the number of works in Table 5.

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