Accidents often occur at sea, so effective maritime search and rescue is essential. In the current process of sea search and rescue, the operation efficiency of large search and rescue equipment is low and it can't provide stable communication link. In this paper, UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) and USVs (Unmanned Surface Vehicles) are used to form a cognitive mobile computing network for cooperative search and rescue, and RL (Reinforcement Learning) is used to plan search path and improve communication throughput. Based on the scene of marine search and rescue, the grid method is used to model the search and rescue area. Meanwhile, an intra-group communication architecture based on UAVs and USVs is designed to assist intra-group communication by recognizing the link channel state between UAVs. Search and rescue path planning is carried out through the strategy iteration of MDP (Markov Decision Process). Furthermore, In addition, distributed RL is used to recognize the channel state and perform mobile computing, so as to optimize the data throughput in the communication group. The simulation results show that we have successfully completed the path planning task. Compared with conventional methods, RL based on different reward functions has better throughput performance under the same number of UAV auxiliary communications.

The ever-increasing growth in maritime activities with large amounts of maritime Internet of Things (M-IoT) devices and the exploration of ocean network leads to a great challenge for dealing with a massive amount of maritime data in a cost-effective and energy-efficient way. However, the resources-constrained maritime users cannot meet the high requirements of transmission delay and energy consumption, due to the excessive traffic and limited resources in maritime networks. To solve this problem, mobile edge computing is taken as a promising paradigm to help mobile devices from edge servers via computation offloading considering the different quality of services (QoS) with the complex ocean environments, resulting in energy saving and increased transmission latency. To investigate the tradeoff between latency and energy consumption in low-cost large-scale maritime communication, we formulate the offloading optimization problem and propose a two-stage joint optimal offloading algorithm, optimizing computation and communication resource allocation under limited energy and sensitive latency. At the first stage, the maritime users make the decision on whether to offload a computation considering their demands and environments. Then, the channel allocation and power allocation problem were proposed to optimize the offloading policy which coordinates with the center cloud servers at the second stage, considering the dynamic tradeoff of latency and energy consumption. Finally, numerical simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

With the development of the maritime networks, the data of vessel users is growing exponentially, more and more resource intensive tasks, such as multimedia applications, high-definition video playback and games, appear in the daily demands. These changes have greatly increased the energy consumption and bandwidth requirements of vessel terminals and networks. In order to meet the requirements of high bandwidth and low delay for the high-speed development of mobile network, and reduce the network load, the concept of mobile edge computing (MEC) is proposed and has been widely supported by the academia and industry. It is considered to be one of the key technologies of the next generation networks. Inspired by this idea, this paper introduces computing offloading technology to maritime mobile cloud networks. Maritime mobile cloud network is the product of the continuous development of cloud computing technology and mobile Internet technology. In this article, we studied the issue of computation task offloading for vessel terminals, focusing on minimizing the energy consumption of vessel terminals and the execution delay of computation task. Firstly, it determines that whether if it should be offloaded to the cloud server. Secondly, the server should be selected to run the computation task. The goal of the optimization is to minimize the energy consumption of vessel terminals and the execution delay of computation task taking into account of different weights. To reduce the execution latency and device energy consumption, we proposed a multi-vessel computation offloading algorithm based on improved Hungarian algorithm in maritime mobile edge computing network. Finally, simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

In this article, we attempt to solve the issue of optimal scheduling for vessels monitoring video data uploading in maritime cyber physical systems, during the period of sailing from the origin port to destination port. We consider the terrestrial infrastructure-based networking, delivering video packets assisted by the shoreside infostations to the authorities on land. Each video packet has respective elements (i.e. release time, deadline, processing time, and weight) to describe, in which deadline is utilized to demonstrate the time domain limitation before that to upload it successfully. In order to cope with the computation complexity of traditional scheduling algorithms in intermittent infostations scenario, time-capacity mapping method is exploited to transfer it to a continue scenario when classic scheduling algorithms could be utilized with lower time complexity. An ingenious mathematic job-machine scheduling formulation is indicated with the goal of minimizing the total penalties of tardiness of uploaded video packets, taking into account the tardiness and the weights of jobs simultaneously. A genetic based algorithm, as well as an improved genetic algorithm–based optimization scheme, is proposed to target this optimization formulation. Specially, the genetic based algorithm as well as the improved genetic based algorithm are described in detail, including a novel chromosome representation, a heuristic initialization procedure, as well as a modified crossover and mutation process. The effectiveness of the proposed schemes is verified by the simulation results.

Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) are progressing from proof-of-concept to engineering test and initial application phases due to advancements in intelligent sensing, automatic control, and communication technologies. However, numerous studies have shown that the improvement of automation level does not linearly reduce human factor risks. Instead, it exhibits more complex evolutionary characteristics at the medium automation level. In particular, MASS Level 2 (MASS L2) features a “system-dominated, human-supervised” operational mode, and its human factor risks have become one of the key factors restricting the safe operation, large-scale application and sustainable long-term deployment of autonomous ships. This study employs a systematic literature review to analyze 89 core articles (2020–2025) and summarizes the theoretical basis, risk characteristics, and evolutionary trends of human factor risk research in MASS L2. The review results indicate that the current research consensus has gradually shifted from the traditional “human error”-centered explanatory paradigm to a systematic understanding of “information mismatches, opacity, and coupling failures in the human-machine-shore collaborative system”. Typical human factor risks in MASS L2 are mainly manifested as the degradation of supervisory cognition and situation awareness, imbalance in trust in automation, vulnerability in mode switching and takeover, skill degradation, and structural risks in ship-shore collaboration. Based on these findings, this study constructs a classification system and a comprehensive analysis framework for human factor risks in MASS L2, reveals the interaction relationships and dynamic evolution mechanisms among different risk types from a system-level perspective, and further discusses the limitations of existing research in terms of methods, data, and engineering applicability. Finally, considering the development trends of autonomous ship technology, this study proposes future research directions in human factor theoretical modeling, dynamic risk assessment, system design, and operation management. This study aims to provide a systematic knowledge framework for human factor risk research in MASS L2 and offer references for the safety design, safety management, and development of higher-level automation of autonomous ships, while supporting the sustainable and safe advancement of the global intelligent shipping industry.