Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) have emerged as key enablers of autonomous maritime operations, offering innovative solutions across multiple industries, including defense, oceanography, offshore energy, and logistics. This review examines the current state of operative USVs, analyzing their technological evolution, design characteristics, and applications. The study highlights trends in autonomy, propulsion, endurance, and communication technologies, providing insights based on market-ready platforms. While USVs present significant advantages in terms of efficiency and operational safety, challenges such as regulatory constraints, cybersecurity risks, and limitations in autonomous decision-making persist. This paper aims to update researchers, policymakers, and industry stakeholders on the technological advancements and emerging trends shaping the future of unmanned vehicles.

When considering a system composed of a group of robots, swarm robotics is an approach that can be used to coordinate this group. These swarms can be inspired or not by social insects or other animal societies (Trianni, 2008), where basic behaviors are usually used to compose complex tasks. These previously mentioned basic behaviors have been studied for a long time, with applications, for example, to flocks, herds, and schools (Reynolds, 1987) and multi-robot teams (T. Balch & Arkin, 1998). Here we introduce PySwarming, a tool that makes easy the coordination of swarms and serves as a centerpiece, organizing different methods developed in the swarm robotics field. Its flexibility (written in Python) and customizability (easily customized by users) encourage interaction and scientific progress in the research community.

Offshore oil production with the employment of FPSOs (Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading) unit faces the challenge of increasing well volumes, processing and storage capacity and ultimately oil offloading and transportation. Following the natural activity development in some oil fields, the number of spread-moored FPSOs and the employment of Dynamic Positioning Shuttle Tankers increased, however represent altogether a bottleneck for the production capacity and considerable transportation cost increment. The need to implement alternatives for the use of larger and conventional tankers is evident, and several attempts and use of technology are being tested and proposed. The work presents preliminary numerical and cost analysis of an innovative Oil Loading Terminal (OLT) for deep water. Based on field data, metocean studies and extensive practical experience, the OLT should allow direct offloading from the FPSOs onto conventional shuttle tankers including VLCCs. The OLT concept allows the transfer of oil from an FPSO to a conventional tanker moored in CALM Buoy through submerged oil offloading lines (OOLs) supported by a tethered submerged buoy. The conventional tanker will receive the oil through a floating hose string. The cornerstone of this OLT concept is the subsurface buoy application to support the OLLs and consequently de-coupling the FPSO and CALM Buoy motions simultaneously. As a result, the OOLs loads and fatigue efforts under the CALM Buoy also decrease. The paper evaluates an OLT specific conception for the Brazilian offshore pre-salt area and results related to the numerical analysis carried out are presented considering one submerged buoy connected to a FPSO and CALM Buoy via flexible offloading lines respectively. The results appoint to a technically feasible solution that can be complementarily laboratory and field tested. Further, the solution cost impact has been assessed and initial figures demonstrate that the final testing, construction and installation of one system will need investment that cost a fraction of tanker lifting costs currently requiring Ship-to-Ship oil transfers. The economies assessed with the use of this innovative solution include total avoidance of Ship-to-Ship costs; cuts transportation cost per ton in up to 50% (fifty percent), eliminates offloading bottlenecks allowing better use of FPSO storage and plant processing capacity, and ultimately decreases the number of tanker offloading operations with considerable benefit to operational safety by reducing risk exposure.

Autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs) have played a crucial role in various areas, including oceanographic research, environmental monitoring, and asset inspection. However, the high cost and proprietary nature of many platforms limit accessibility. Thus, this work introduces a low-cost, fully open-source ASV platform designed to support a wide range of applications, from academic research to community-driven monitoring projects, bridging the existing gap between low-cost prototyping and naval architecture-based ASV development. Featuring a modular 2 m hull design, the vehicle integrates off-the-shelf components and open-source software to ensure affordability, flexibility, and ease of replication. Field tests were conducted on Ilha do Fundão (Fundão Island), located within the campus of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil. All design files and code are released on GitHub (version 1.0.0) to encourage adoption and collaborative improvement.